First American Art Magazine No. 39, Summer 2023

TEN YEARS of CELEBRATING ART by INDIGENOUS PEOPLES of the AMERICAS

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023

GUTSKIN SEWING

AVIS CHARLEY

COUNTERPUBLIC

AHKIMA HONYUMPTEWA

MOPA MOPA FROM COLOMBIA DISPLAY UNTIL OCT. 9, 2023

BLACK-ON-WHITE PUEBLO POTTERY

IRA LUJAN MELANIE YAZZIE

SAVE SAVE THE THE DATE DATE October October 6-7, 6-7, 2023 2023 Tishomingo, Tishomingo, Oklahoma Oklahoma Open Opentotoany anymember memberofofaafederally federallyrecognized recognizedSoutheastern SoutheasternIndian Indiantribe. tribe.

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WinStar WinStar World World Casino Casino and and Resort Resort Thackerville, Thackerville, Oklahoma Oklahoma Open Opentotoany anymember memberofofaafederally federallyrecognized recognizedFirst FirstAmerican Americantribe. tribe.

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For Formore moreinformation, information,call call(580) (580)272-5520 272-5520 or oremail emailArtistInfo@Chickasaw.net ArtistInfo@Chickasaw.net

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS • California Stars: Huivaniūs Pütsiv • Always in Relation: artworks from the Schultz collection • Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry

Tuesday–Saturday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm For more information: wheelwright.org

SPECIAL EVENTS • 48th Annual Benefit Event August 16–18, 2023 • 3rd Annual Artists Market August 18–19, 2023

Wheelwright Museum

OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 704 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe NM 87505

MahotaTextiles.com info@mahotatextiles.com

A S C E N S I O N

Design by Chickasaw Artist Billy Hensley

2023 Mahota Featured Artist and FaraHNHeight Exhibitor at La Fonda on the Plaza

@tia_healey_photography

in Santa Fe

WHITNEY JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH MEMORY MAP

Whitney Museum of American Art Through August 13

whitney.org @whitneymuseum #whitneymuseum

Generous support for Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map is provided by

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Memory Map, 2000. Oil, acrylic, and paper on canvas, 36 x 48 in. (91.4 x 121.9 cm). OZ Art NWA, Bentonville, Arkansas. © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

June 24 – September 3 Expanding the narrative of midcentury abstraction, Action/Abstraction Redefined highlights groundbreaking paintings, sculptures, textiles, and works on paper that challenged stereotypical expectations of Native American art during the postwar era.

slam.org | @STLArtMuseum T. C. Cannon, Caddo and Kiowa, 1946–1978; Firelights, c.1965; oil on canvas; 36 3/4 x 48 3/4 inches; Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CD-2 2023.145; © Estate of T. C. Cannon

Sarah Lamontagne David Lipnowski

Lindsay Reid

This is a new museum A place for us to meet and share, a centre for learning and discovery, and a way to connect with each other through art. Visit the world’s largest collection of contemporary Inuit art. Learn more at wag.ca Winnipeg Art Gallery–Qaumajuq 300 Memorial Blvd. Winnipeg, MB, Canada

8 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

July 16, 2023 – June 2, 2024

Artist once known (Diné), women’s shoulder blanket, ca 1860–1890, handspun wool, vegetal dye, indigo dye, aniline dye, sinew, plant matter. Gift of Mrs. Philip B. Stewart, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology 9100/12. Rapheal Begay, Spider Rock (Tseyi—Canyon de Chelly, Chinle, AZ) (detail), 2021, digital photograph.

Horizons is made possible through support from France A. Córdova and Christian J. Foster; the Terra Foundation for American Art; Tom and Mary James; Shiprock Santa Fe; the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs; and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation.

through April 7, 2024

on MuseuM hill in santa Fe, new Mexico internationalFolkart.org · (505) 476-1200 photo: St. Lawrence Island Yupik ancestor artist, Sanightaaq (ceremonial seal gut parka) (detail), early 20th century, Museum of International Folk Art, gift of Lloyd E. Cotsen, Neutrogena Corp., A.1995.93.986.

Photo by Addison Doty. Ghhúunayúkata is made possible through funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art. It is also supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the International Folk Art Foundation, The CIRI Foundation, and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation’s Exhibition Development Fund.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 9

MoIFA-ANP+MIAC-HZ_FAAMsummer2023.indd 1

5/23/23 11:56 AM

INDIGENOUS ARTS FESTIVAL BUFFALO THUNDER RESORT & CASINO | SANTA FE, NM

AUGUST 18, 19 & 20, 2023 ARTS MARKET • CREATIVE ENTREPRENUERS FILM • INDIGENOUS FASHION • FOOD TRUCKS

BuffaloThunderResort.com

PoehCenter.org

issue no. 39, summer 2023

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

Gutskin Sewing in Alaska

By Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq)

32

Recent Developments

By Liam Hart and America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

19

Gutskin by Glenda McKay

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

42

In Memoriam: Margaret Archuleta Lee-Ann Martin (Mohawk) and India Rael Young, PhD

22

Legacies of Black-and-White Pueblo Pottery

By Michelle J. Lanteri, PhD

44

Seven Directions Kevin Coochwytewa (Isleta Pueblo/Hopi)

25

Barniz de Pasto: The Magic of Colombia's Mopa Mopa

By Madeline Sobral (Cherokee Nation)

52

Counterpublic 2023: A Mound City Triennial

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

60

70

Art+Lit 114 Michelle Good: Cree Writer, Poet, and Lawyer

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD Kaylene Big Knife (Chippewa Cree)

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Calendar

ARTIST PROFILES

76

Avis Charley: Spirit Lake Dakota/Diné Painter and Ledger Artist

By Paul Niemi

70

Ahkima Honyumptewa: Hopi Textile Artist and Painter

By Jill Ahlberg Yohe, PhD

76

Ira Lujan: Taos/Ohkay Owingeh Glass Artist

By Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD

82

Melanie Yazzie: Navajo Printmaker, Painter, Sculptor, and Jeweler

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

88

124

REVIEWS Exhibition Reviews

96

Reports

110

MEMORIALS Ron Carlos 118

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

82

Benjamin Harjo Jr. 119

By Kenneth Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho/Cattaraugus Seneca) Presley LaFountain

By Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke)

120

Michael McCabe

By Grace Rosario Perkins (Diné/Akimel O'odham)

121

Rose Kerstetter 122 Hoka Skenandore (Oneida/Oglala Lakota/Luiseño/Chicano) cover Avis Charley (Spirit Lake Dakota/Diné), In the Moment, 2020, oil on canvas, 36 × 36 in.

Image courtesy of the artist.

88

Joe Senungetuk

By Christopher W. Smith

123

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 11

issue no. 39, summer 2023 ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Digital)

EXPERIENCE the

Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Literary Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD (Euro-Canadian) Contributing Editor: Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke) Advertising Representative: Barbara Harjo Operations Manager: James G. Bland Circulation Manager: Nicole Emmons (Citizen Potawatomi) Copy Editors: Rosa Cays (Chicana), Staci Golar, and Noah Romero, PhD (Ilokano/Visaya) Proofreaders: Travis D. Day, Staci Golar, Jo Ann Reece, and Angela C. Villa (Chicana) Layout and Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) and Corey Yazzie (Navajo) Social Media: Staci Golar, America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho), and Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke) Summer Intern: Liam Hart

Coe Center Regional Representatives

Great Basin: Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern Paiute/Modoc) Great Plains: Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho) Northeast: Kelly Church (Gun Lake Pottawatomi/Ottawa/Ojibwe) Northwest: Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq) Southeast: Michole Eldred (Catawba/Eastern Cherokee descent) Southwest: Holly Coonsis (Zuni) and RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo)

Advisory Council

DISCOVER EXPERIENCE ART

Miranda Belarde-Lewis, PhD (Zuni/Tlingit) Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation) Emily Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Linda Lomahaftewa, Hon. DHum (Hopi/Choctaw) Leah Mata Fragua (Coastal Chumash) Anya Montiel, PhD (Mestiza/Tohono O'odham descent) Denise Neil, PhD (Delaware Tribe/Cherokee Nation) Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa) Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole Nation) India Rael Young, PhD

Visit coeartscenter.org to Learn More

Advertising Representative

Barbara Harjo, barbara@firstamericanartmagazine.com International distribution by Disticor Magazine Distribution Services

ABOUT US • • • • •

First American Art Magazine, LLC, is not responsible for the content of any article or for the statements of any advertiser. First American Art Magazine welcomes queries about editorial submissions. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, or artwork.

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Copyright ©2023 by First American Art Magazine, LLC. Cover and contents are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or part by any method without written permission, except specific images listed with Creative Commons licenses. Any errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. First American Art Magazine® is registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

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S PECIALIZING IN T HE

SALE OF ESTATE & PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Richard Hanson Collection of Southwest Pottery

Contact director@quintanagalleries.com

Q UINTANA G ALLERIES

for consignment and purchase inquiries.

quintanagalleries.com 503-810-7525 NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 13

EDITOR’S GREETING

I above America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), The Harjos, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 30 × 24 in., private collection.

14 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

T’S HARD TO ENVISION THE WORLD without Benjamin Harjo Jr. (Absentee Shawnee/Seminole Nation, 1945–2023). He seemed ever present— at Native art markets, art shows, at the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian, meeting Justice Sonia Sotomayor, honored at Native American Art Studies Association conferences, and so many other pivotal events. Artists, collectors, art professionals, friends, and strangers gravitated toward his infectious laugh and ear-to-ear grin. His non sequiturs, jokes, and quizzical looks framed by his bushy eyebrows were light years beyond “dad jokes.” He could share

profound insights on art and life—or imitate Mickey Mouse.

I met Ben when I was six years old at the beginning of the Center of the American Indian in Oklahoma City, where a team of Native activists, scholars, and artists established a Native-led art museum with rapidly changing exhibitions. Back then, Ben had long braids wrapped in red trade cloth; to me, he exuded cool. He was back in Oklahoma after he graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and was then drafted into the US Army to serve in Vietnam as an ammo sergeant (not, as I had mistakenly written in a school essay, an animal sergeant). He had earned his BFA at Oklahoma State University (and worked a large amount of their black and orange school colors into his artwork through the years) and had gone through his “wild years” in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1982 Ben married Barbara Harjo and the two became a force to be reckoned with.

My parents maintained a strong connection with Ben and Barbara through the years. When I wanted to go to IAIA (I thought it was hard to get into—after all, this is where T. C. Cannon went to school!), my parents asked Ben to critique my artwork, and he agreed to write a letter of recommendation. To visit his basement studio involved admiration of his preserved mole (the rodent kind) with “perfect hands,” as Barbara has explained. This explanation, like so many interactions with Ben, provides more questions than answers.

As I began to exhibit my art, Ben and Barbara took me under their wings, as they did with so many other artists: Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho), Nelda Schrupp (Pheasant Rump Nakota), Jane Osti (Cherokee Nation), Dolores Purdy (Caddo/Winnebago), and countless more. They created a culture of encouragement, mutual aid, and silly pranks to get through slow art market afternoons.

Other Native artists have told me they encountered cold shoulders and jealousy when they began to exhibit art. Because of how welcoming the Harjos have been, I thought it was only natural to pay it forward and collect from emerging artists and include them in group exhibitions.

The creation of FAAM can trace a direct

“We know how Ben shared so much with so many people, but I don’t know if everyone knew how much Ben needed them and how much they lifted him up.” through line to the Harjos’ ethos of generosity. Ben also made it clear to me, when I was a brash, young artist, that my opportunities directly resulted from the hard work and sacrifices of the Native art community that came before.

Ages ago at Red Earth, Ben, Bert Seabourn, and my dad were clowning around with a reporter. Ben and Bert were trying to convince the reporter that my dad was their son (never mind that my dad was older than both of them). It became a running joke that Ben was my sister’s and my grandpa. Jokes became real. Good friends to the end, Bert and Ben both served as pallbearers at my dad’s funeral.

Ben and Barbara joined my mom, sister, and me at holiday gatherings, and I knew how lucky I was to be able to spend so much time with him. Ben made time for so many people. Collectors became

lifelong friends. He shared his knowledge of art so freely, and the lucky kids got to have art classes with him. “We know how Ben shared so much with so many people,” Barbara told me, “but I don’t know if everyone knew how much Ben needed them and how much they lifted him up.”

Learning of Ben’s two cancers was devastating, but Barbara credits the excellent care he received in the last year for allowing him more time with us. He stayed cheerful and asked friends to “remember the good times.”

He was able to attend the Wheelwright Art Market organized by his adopted nephew Kenneth Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho/Seneca) in August 2022. His strength held up, and he exhibited his art in the Cherokee Art Market, Heard Fair, and finally, the Artesian Arts Festival,

hosted by the Chickasaw Nation. He kept painting new work to the end.

I can’t thank Oklahoma Contemporary and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian enough for hosting Ben’s Celebration of Life gatherings. The staff of these institutions exemplify the kindness and altruism that reflect the best of our art community.

Even if you’ve never met Ben, you’ve likely seen his art (it’s in this magazine).

His stories and artwork can bring us joy and inspire us in our endeavors. I hope his example of a life well spent inspires you also to find pleasure in the little things: going to a matinee movie, yard sale, casino, used bookstore, or wild onion dinner—or perhaps enjoying carne asada at the Lazy Donkey Restaurant. As Ben taught us, simple pleasures can become great adventures! —America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 15

DANIEL MCCOY New works opening Friday, August 4, 5-7pm On view through August 28

Great Chain of Being, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72

HECHO GALLERY 129 W Palace Ave, Santa Fe, NM www.hecho.gallery 505.455.6882 16 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

HEAR THEIR VOICES For 90 years, the Stewart Indian School operated as a federal boarding school for Native children. Today, the Stewart story is told through the belongings, artwork, and voices of its former students. Explore exhibits, changing galleries, the research library, reflection room, and educational spaces.

10am–5pm | Monday–Friday Closed Weekends, State and Federal Holidays 1 Jacobsen Way, Carson City, Nevada

(775) 687-7608 StewartIndianSchool.com NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 17

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS MUSEUMS The BROOKLYN MUSEUM in New York hired Darienne Turner (Yurok) as its inaugural curator of Indigenous art. Previously she served as assistant curator of Indigenous art of the Americas at the Baltimore Museum of Art and taught graphic design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Turner earned her master’s degree from Bard Graduate Center and her bachelor degree from Stanford University.

The MONTREAL MUSEUM OF FINE ART in Quebec hired its first curator of Indigenous art, Léuli Eshrāghi (Sāmoan). They earned their doctoral degree in curatorial practices from Monash University and a certificate in Indigenous arts management from the University of Melbourne. They curated the TarraWarra Biennial 2023: ua usiusi fa‘ava‘asavili at the TarraWarra Museum of Art in Australia.

The PORTLAND ART MUSEUM (PAM) in Oregon hired Erin Grant (Colorado River Hopi) as its first assistant curator of Native American art. She works with the curator of Native American art, Kathleen Ash-Milby (Navajo). Previously Grant was an Institute of Museum and Library Services curatorial and community partnerships fellow at PAM and an intern at the School for Advanced Research. She earned her master’s degree from the New School in New York.

The SHELBURNE MUSEUM in Vermont plans to build the Perry Center for Native American Art after Teressa Perry donated a 200-piece collection in honor of her late husband Tony Perry.

The collection features historical works, including pottery, beadwork, and textiles, from Plains, Southwestern, and Prairie tribes. The museum had chosen Adjaye Associates to design the new building; however, they cut ties with the firm after former employees accused principal architect Sir David Adjaye of sexual assault and harassment.

ABOVE Darienne Turner, inaugural curator of Indigenous art of the Americas at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Photo: Christina Chahyadi.

ORGANIZATIONS CANADIAN ARTISTS’ REPRESENTATION/LE FRONT DES ARTISTES CANADIENS (CARFAC), based in Ottawa, selected Theresie Tungilik (Inuk) from Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, to serve as its president. She became CARFAC’s vice president in 2019. Previously she served on CARFAC’s board and Indigenous advisory council. She also was an arts advisor for Nunavut and was on the board of the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Qaumajuq’s Indigenous advisory board.

The SOUTHWESTERN ASSOCIATION FOR INDIAN ARTS (SWAIA) hired Jamie Schulze (Northern Cheyenne/ Sisseton Wahpeton) as its executive director, making her the third Native American woman to lead the organization that hosts the annual Santa Fe Indian Market. She had served as SWAIA’s interim director, director of operations, and volunteer coordinator.

Jamie Okuma (Luiseño/Shoshone-Bannock/Wailaki) and Jordan Ann Craig (Northern Cheyenne) were appointed as commissioners to the INDIAN ARTS AND CRAFTS BOARD (IACB).

Founded in 1935, the IACB promotes Native American art, enforces the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, maintains three museums and a gift store, and hosts the online Source Directory of Native American artists.

ABOVE Léuli Eshrāghi, first curator of Indigenous arts at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Photo: Rhett Hammerton.

The OGLALA LAKOTA ARTSPACE opened on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on May 20, 2023. Supported

by First Peoples Fund, Lakota Funds, and Artspace, the center houses studios, classrooms, recording studio, computer lab, and space for performances, exhibitions, and gatherings.

ART SHOWS

ABOVE Jamie Schulze, executive director of the Southwestern Indian Artists Association. Image Courtesy of Jamie Schulze.

Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation) won grand prize at the 52nd annual TRAIL OF TEARS ART SHOW hosted by the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Classification winners were Norma Howard (Choctaw Nation/Chickasaw/ Mississippi Choctaw), painting; Jon Williams (Cherokee Nation), sculpture; Vivian Cottrell (Cherokee Nation), basketry; Crystal Hanna (Cherokee NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 19

MARWIN BEGAYE Prints

Nation), pottery; Tiffany Reiter (Cherokee Nation), jewelry; Norma Howard, miniature; Julie Burk (Cherokee Nation), diverse art; and Jeff Edwards (Cherokee Nation), photography/digital art. Jeremy Thompson (Seminole) won the Trail of Tears award and Laney Cully (Cherokee Nation) won the emerging artist award. Tama Roberts (Cherokee Nation) won the Betty Scraper Garner Elder Award, and Tonia Weavel (Cherokee Nation) won the Bill Rabbit Legacy Award.

Robin Stockton (Cherokee Nation) won the Jennie Ross Cobb Photography Award.

The Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, hosts the 55th annual RED CLOUD INDIAN ART SHOW. Division winners were Bryan Parker (Muscogee/Mississippi Choctaw/), painting; Derek D’Artagnan (Saginaw Chippewa), drawing; Roger Broer (Oglala Lakota), graphics; Marlena Myles (Spirit Lake Dakota), photography and digital art; Amé Myles (Spirit Lake Dakota), mixed media; Kelton Cloud (Choctaw Nation), three dimensional; Ike Swan (Cheyenne River Sioux), cultural art forms; and Dwayne Wilcox (Oglala Lakota), adornment. Amé Myles won the Brother Simon Purchase Award. Special award winners were Vernon Cuny (Oglala Lakota), Founder’s Award; Ray “Rock Boy” Janis (Oglala Lakota), judge’s choice; Amé Myles, Oscar Howe Award; Derek Santos (Oglala Lakota), abstract; Molina Parker (Oglala Lakota), Continuum Award; Bryan Parker, humor; Richard Red Owl (Oglala Lakota), representation; Derek D’Artagnan, visual sovereignty; and Teslah “Sota” Knight (Mnicoujou Lakota/Oglala/Navajo), new artist.

ART MARKETS

48004 St. Andrew’s Road | Pendleton, OR 97801 | 541-276-3954

crowsshadow.org St. Andrews Paradise, 2018, monoprint, 22½” x 15” Collaborating Master Printer, Judith Baumann

20 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

Monica Jo Raphael (Grand Traverse Odawa-Ojibwe/Lakota) won best of show at the tenth annual ARTESIAN ARTS FESTIVAL, hosted by the Chickasaw Nation in Sulphur, Oklahoma. Ron Mitchell (Cherokee Nation) won best of 2D art, Ray Garcia (San Felipe Pueblo) won best of 3D art, and Cynthia Turner (Chickasaw) won best of culture. Classification winners were Benjamin Harjo Jr. (Absentee Shawnee/ Seminole, 1945–2023), painting; Mercedes Volino (Chickasaw), drawing; Lisa Hudson (Chickasaw), photography; Amy Gantt (Chickasaw), graphic arts; Billy Hensley (Chickasaw), mixed media; Kelton Cloud (Choctaw Nation), sculpture (other); Amanda Schultz (Chickasaw), jewelry (stone and organic); Charley Johnson (Flandreau Dakota/Cherokee/ Muscogee/Seminole/Chickasaw), jewelry (metal); Courtney Parchcorn-John (Chickasaw), textiles (handwoven); Melissa Freeman (Chickasaw), textiles; Glenda Dewbre (Chickasaw), 3D diverse; Jon Tiger (Muscogee), miniature; Cotie Underwood-Poe (Chickasaw), baskets; Sharon Gregory (Chickasaw), jewelry (beaded); Ashley Wallace (Chickasaw), beadwork/ quillwork; Buddy Parchcorn (Cherokee Nation), traditional dress and regalia; Paul Hacker (Choctaw Nation), musical instruments; Richard Thomas (Cherokee), weaponry; Ben White (Chickasaw), traditional pottery; and Hunter Erwin (Choctaw Nation), cultural diverse.

Starr Hardridge (Muscogee) won Best of Show at the second annual MVSKOKE ART MARKET, hosted by the Muscogee

(Creek) Nation in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Kenneth Johnson (Muscogee/Seminole) won the Mvskoke Heritage Award. Classification winners were Timothy Tate Nevaquaya (Comanche), painting; Dan Beaver (Muscogee), diverse art forms; Ronda Talbert Moss (Cherokee Nation), basketry; Benjamin West (Otoe-Missouria/Southern Cheyenne), drawing/graphic art/ photography; Phyllis Fife (Muscogee), textiles (wearable); Janae Grass (Sac & Fox/Muscogee/Absentee Shawnee), textiles (nonwearable); Patricia Belgarde-Cornelius (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), beadwork/quillwork; Chase Kahwinhut Earles (Caddo), pottery; Kenneth Johnson, sculpture; and Sandy Fife Wilson (Muscogee), jewelry.

Detail of Do You Remember Your Dreams, 2022. Giclée print. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Bulger Gallery and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain. Title:

Sculptor Tim Washburn (Navajo) won Best of Show at the inaugural DINÉ COLLEGE NATIVE AMERICAN ART MARKET in Tsaile, Arizona. Category winners (all Navajo) were Jennifer Curtis, jewelry/lapidary; Myron Denetclaw, 2D art; Penny Singer, weaving and textiles; Darius M. Charley, diverse art forms; and Leander Goldtooth, basketry.

Glenda McKay (Deg Xit'an) won Best of Show at the 31st annual EITELJORG INDIAN MARKET AND FESTIVAL, hosted by the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana. Kelly Church (Gun Lake Potawatomi/Ottawa/Ojibwe) and Aydrian James Day (Ho-Chunk/Anishinaabe/Lakota) both won purchase awards.

The Helen Cox Kersting Award winner was Raynard Scott (Navajo). Division winners were David Martin (Pokagon Potawatomi), two-dimensional art; David Farnham (Onondaga), sculpture; Glenda McKay, carvings and dolls; Tonya June Rafael (Navajo), jewelry; Crystal Hanna (Cherokee Nation), pottery; Kelly Church, basketry; Leah Mata Fragua (Northern Chumash), weavings and textiles; Glenda McKay, cultural items; Salisha Old Bull (Interior Salish/Crow), beadwork; and Raynard Scott, innovative arts.

Roy Talahaftewa (Hopi) won the Best of Show at HERITAGE FESTIVAL 2023 at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. Mona Laughing (Navajo) won the MNA Spirit Award. Classification winners were Roy Talahaftewa, jewelry; Ramon Howata (Hopi), pottery; Kevin Horace-Quannie (Hopi), sculpture; Iva Honyestewa (Hopi), basketry; Al Bahe (Navajo), fine art; Steve Darden (Navajo/Cheyenne), cultural and folk art; Michelle Tsosie Sisneros (Navajo), contemporary attire; Cory Ahownewa (Hopi), katsina doll carving, traditional; Kevin Horace-Quannie (Hopi), katsina doll carving, contemporary; Patricia Smith (Navajo), Navajo jewelry; Duran Gasper (Zuni), Zuni jewelry; Jimmy Yawakia (Zuni), Zuni fetishes; Lynn Quam (Zuni) and Jayne Quam (Navajo), Zuni fetishes, contemporary; Mona Laughing, Navajo weaving; Ahkima Honyumptewa (Hopi), Pueblo weavings and textiles; and Riley Ahownewa (Hopi), youth.

Featuring new and prior photography and film, this exhibition explores the disruption of time in McMaster’s luminous, large-format work.

Closes October 15, 2023

MONTCLAIR ART MUSEUM 3 South Mountain Avenue, Montclair, NJ 07042 montclairartmuseum.org

AWARDS & HONORS The FORGE PROJECT announced its six 2023 FORGE FELLOWS: Margeaux Abeyta (Taos/Diné), Brent Michael Davids (Mohican/Stockbridge Munsee), Lucy Grignon (Stockbridge Munsee/Menominee), Emily Johnson (Yup'ik), NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 21

IN MEMORIAM

Suzanne Kite (Oglala Lakota), and Rachel Martin (Tlingit). Each fellow receives a $25,000 grant and has a threeweek residency at the Forge Project’s site in Ancram, New York, the historical homeland of the Mohican people. Two fellowships are specific to members of the Stockbridge Munsee Community, now based in Wisconsin.

PRECONTACT ART Jewelry carved from giant sloth bones was discovered in the SANTA ELINA ROCK SHELTER in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Ancient artists carved, polished, and drilled holes into the three bone pendants. These pendants date from 25,000 to 27,000 years ago and push back Western models for the settlement of the Americas by millennia.

ERRATA In “READERS RESPOND,” the summary of our reader’s survey results in First American Art Magazine No.

22 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

above Margaret Archuleta, 2019.

38, Spring 2023, on page 10, we left out what percentage of our readers are artists. Our readers are 59.0 percent art collectors, 38.1 percent educators, 31.7 percent artists, 25.2 percent scholars, and 19.4 percent curators, among many other, often overlapping, roles within the Indigenous art world.

MARGARET ARCHULETA (1950– 2023), a direct descendant of Isleta Pueblo and also of Hispanic heritage, was singular in the early 1980s in her determination to educate others about Native American art and raise awareness at a time when its discussion was largely relegated to anthropology and natural history museums. She completed her master’s degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, with her thesis on Coyote: A Myth in the Making (1988–89), the traveling exhibition of Harry Fonseca (Nisenan Maidu, 1946–2006).

Margaret joined the Heard Museum in 1987 as curator of fine art and initiated many programs designed to elevate the profile and understanding of contemporary Native American art.

From 1987 to 2002 she curated six group exhibitions, including the recurring Biennial of Native American Fine Arts Invitational at the Heard Museum, from which acquisitions strengthened the Heard’s art collection. In 1991, with Rennard Strickland, Margaret co-curated

and coedited the exhibition and publication Shared Visions: Native American Painters and Sculptors in the Twentieth Century. This exhibition traveled internationally to Canada and Aotearoa (New Zealand), as well as to Washington, DC. In 1997 Margaret further extended the profiles of artists with her exhibition Twentieth Century American Sculpture at the White House: Honoring Native America.

The publication included an essay by Margaret and an introduction by then US First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Margaret’s seminal achievements were the exhibition Remembering Our Indian School Days: The Boarding School Experience and the publication Away From Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences, 1879–2000.

The exhibition opened at the Heard Museum in November 2000 and traveled in the US and abroad. As the museum’s most successful and longest-running exhibition, it still attracts visitors in 2023.

Margaret was active in the early years of the Native American Art Studies Association. She was a member of the Native Advisory Council for the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis and the greatest supporter of that museum’s Contemporary Art Fellowship, which brings Native contemporary art into the limelight. Her influence was international for many projects, most specifically her role as co-organizer for the inaugural Indigenous art residency in 2003 at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, Canada.

Titled “Communion and Other Conversations,” Margaret helped direct the program with Brenda Croft (Gurindji/ Malngin/Mudburra), Megan Tamati-Quennell (Te Ātiawa/ Ngāti Mutunga/Kāti Mamoe/Ngāi Tahu Iwi), and Lee-Ann Martin (Mohawk).

In 2003 Margaret returned to New Mexico, the heart of her Isleta Pueblo and Hispanic heritage and place of birth, as the director of the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum (now the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts), a position she held until 2004. She continued to work internationally and support Native artists through exhibitions, juries, and scholarship. Her unpublished dissertation focuses on the resilience and brilliance of Indigenous women artists.

Margaret’s generosity and informal mentorship built an intergenerational community of artists, scholars, and families. Heard volunteer Diana Gast, curator Rayna Green, and artist Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee Nation) shared their council with Margaret, and she brought that caretaking into her everyday life. From 2014 to 2017 Margaret was also the sole caregiver of her uncle Cornelio “Junior” Archuleta. Luanne Redeye (Seneca), Suzanne McLeod (Sagkeeng Anicinabe), Leanne Radicioni, and India Young were some of the women who shared our meals, holidays, and life events with Margaret and her beloved dachshunds, Lucky Lou and Coco. She is survived by her siblings Rick Miller and Catherine O'Hara, as well as their partners and families.

—Lee-Ann Martin (Mohawk) and India Rael Young, PhD

SAVE THE DATE!

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY CELEBRATION MONDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2023 Join the Idyllwild Arts Community for a day of in-person programming including performances, lectures, exhibition, film, food and more! All events are free and open to the public.

Idyllwild Arts Campus | 52500 Temecula Rd. | Idyllwild, CA Visit idyllwildarts.org/nativeamericanarts for more information, or call (951) 659 - 2171 x2327

Idyllwild Arts respectfully acknowledges the Qawishpa Cahuillangnah (also known as Cahuilla Band of Indians) and all nine sovereign Bands of Cahuilla people who have stewarded this land throughout the generations and continue to steward this land for all future generations.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 23

1 8 T H A N N UAL

CHEROKEE ART MARKET O C TO BE R 14 – 15, 2 02 3

“Ancestral Duplication: Battle for our Language” Troy Jackson

HARD ROCK HOTEL AND CASINO TULSA SEQUOYAH CONVENTION CENTER Experience authentic Native art at one of the largest Native American art shows in Oklahoma. New work by accomplished Native artists from across the country will be on display.

Discover and enjoy their exquisite work and add to your collection with beautiful jewelry, pottery, sculptures, paintings, textiles and much more.

cherokeeartmarket.com 24 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

Seven Directions

KEVIN COOCHWYTEWA An Isleta Pueblo/Hopi graphic designer shares his top seven list

T

O BE BORN into Isleta Pueblo and Hopi cultures inspired a lasting appreciation for art and design in Kevin Coochwytewa. Solid bonds with the land and his community shaped his thinking, design, and client relationships. His paternal grandmother named him Talwif 'tiyo, “Lightning Boy” in Hopi. His name reflects his drive and the powerful work he strives to create.

Kevin grew up surrounded by Indigenous art laden with symbolism and meaning, which have influenced his techniques and design aesthetic. He enhanced his cultural immersion with a BFA from the University of Arizona and years of working in senior creative roles. He served as senior designer and art director at the Heard Museum in Phoenix and creative director for Native Peoples. Most recently, Kevin was the graphic design lead at Eighth Generation, a company in Seattle owned by the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe.

LIGHTNINGKEV.COM

NORTH. Desert Rider: Dreaming in Motion, Denver Art Museum above, top Kevin Coochwytewa.

Image courtesy of the author. above, bottom Nanibah Chacon (Diné/Xicana), What Dreams Are Made Of, 2018, acrylic on Polytab, 72 × 204 in., collection of the artist. ©Nanibah Chacon. Image courtesy of the artist. This artwork is part of the Desert Rider: Dreaming in Motion exhibition at the Denver Art Museum.

I feel super fortunate that my line of work allows me to help design visitor and educational experiences for the masses. I recently collaborated with the Denver Art Museum (DAM) as the exhibition graphic designer for two outstanding exhibitions.

The newly reinstalled Arts of Africa gallery that opened in mid-May is a spectacular display of art and objects from the museum’s collection.

Organized around themes of Self, Power and Transformation, and Manifestation, works on display range from hair picks, textiles, jewelry, and sculpture to contemporary paintings. The diversity and richness of African cultures shine in this 2,300-square-foot exhibition.

Shortly after the reinstallation was unveiled, Desert Rider: Dreaming in Motion opened. Organized by the Phoenix Art Museum, Desert Rider runs through September 24, 2023. This super exciting exhibition explores lowrider NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 25

Citrine bracelet by featured artist Patrick Smith

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25th Annual

SEPT.

16 & 17 2023

Jewelry • Weavings • Pottery • Sculpture • Frybread • Paintings • Music • Dance

4 1 5 W. G U R L E Y S T. | 9 2 8 . 4 4 5 . 3 1 2 2 S H A R LOT H A L L M U S E U M .O RG / P I A M and Customization that reflect identity, community, change, and empowerment.

As an urban Native kid from Phoenix who grew up surrounded by and appreciating the lowrider and skate cultures of the ’80 s and ’90s, being part of the design team for Desert Rider has fulfilled a dream and has been a full circle moment for me! denverartmuseum.org WEST. Still We Smile: Humor as Correction and Joy, Idyllwild Arts, Idyllwild, California

above Arts of Africa gallery at the Denver Art Museum. Photo: Eric Stephenson. Denver Art Museum. Image courtesy of Denver Art Museum.

26 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

and skate culture through the eyes of Indigenous and Latinx artists. Native American artists like Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo), Doug Miles (San Carlos Apache/Akimel O'odham), and Cara Romero (Chemehuevi) contribute works in themes of Transformation

Having a good laugh contributes to better health, productivity, and overall happiness. Indigenous cultures worldwide have known this since time immemorial.

Native humor is inherent and essential and practiced daily in kinship, ceremony, and life. If you know, you know!

Idyllwild Arts’ 2023 invitational exhibition, Still We Smile: Humor as Correction and Joy, which ends July 29, 2023, featured six artists whose work is

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based on humor through performance, photography, and other visual arts.

Guest curated by Meranda Roberts, PhD (Yerington Paiute/Chicana), and dedicated to late artist James Luna (Puyukitchum/Ipai/Mexican-American, 1950–2018), Roberts brought together the work of Jeremy Dennis, Zig Jackson, Chelazon Leroux, River Garza, James Luna, and Rachel Martin. These artists embrace wit, irony, and satire to convey their lived experiences and cultural worldviews.

Each summer, Idyllwild Arts hosts an invitational exhibition as part of the Native American Arts Festival Week.

Their longstanding commitment to working with Native artists is inspiring, and their arts programs are extremely well respected. I strongly encourage you to follow the Idyllwild Native American Arts Center to learn about next summer’s Native American Arts Center Festival Week and accompanying exhibition, as well as other exciting events they have planned throughout the year. idyllwildartsgallery.org/still-we-smile SOUTH. One Place, Many Nations: Acknowledging the 39, First Americans Museum, Oklahoma City First Americans Museum (FAM) opened its doors in September 2021 and hit the ground running as an award-winning arts and cultural center. Not only does it provide a beautiful and meaningful gathering space for Oklahoma’s tribal communities, but it also presents rich and important learning opportunities for visitors from around the world.

FAM’s exhibition One Place, Many Nations: Acknowledging the 39 identifies each of the tribal nations in the state,1 most of whom were taken away from their original homelands and moved to Indian Territory through forced relocation in the 19th century. The colorful presentation reflects the richness and diversity of Oklahoma’s Indigenous peoples and identifies their original homelands and distinct cultural and linguistic ties to other tribal communities. Shared

design motifs help visitors visually link each tribe. Hands-on and interactive experiences, along with educational programming, enliven this exhibition.

FAM’s commitment to educating visitors through the voices of the People is powerful, and the symbolism and beauty of the campus architecture and planning is truly remarkable. famok.org/one-place-many-nations

above Graphic for Still We Smile: Humor as Correction and Joy, featuring work by Rachel Martin (Tlingit), at Idyllwild Arts, Idyllwild, California.

1. Oklahoma has 38 federally recognized tribes. First Americans Museum also includes the Yuchi, who are predominantly enrolled in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, but not other historical tribes within tribes. —Ed.

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above One Place, Many Nations: Acknowledging the 39 at First Americans Museum, Oklahoma City. Image courtesy of First Americans Museum.

EAST. Museum of Modern Art, New York City What does my heritage have to do with my art? During a recent visit to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, this question challenged me to pause and reflect.

Essentially, being a Native/Indigenous artist and designer has everything to do with anything I create. My culture, upbringing, and aesthetics are all woven into my work from concept to completion.

It was truly inspiring to see the work of Native artists like Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee Nation), James Luna, and T. C. Cannon (Kiowa/Caddo, 1946–1978) on the same stage as historic pieces by Pablo Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock, and countless other iconic artists and designers who have become household names.

MoMA’s inclusion of Native American artists, especially those whose works address and encourage discussions about misconceptions and stereotypes associated with Indigenous people and art, is undeniably important. With MoMA being one of the most visited museums in the world, the inclusion of Native voices is paramount. moma.org ABOVE. Indian Market shows, King Galleries, Santa Fe Inspiration comes in many forms, from all directions, and there’s no better place to take it all in than the 28 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

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101-year-old Santa Fe Indian Market.

As a young professional, I began attending Indian Market events in 2005.

The buzz of people, art, food, music, performances, fashion, and the beautiful surrounding landscape instantly put me on a natural high.

A highlight through the years has been the annual Indian Market show at King Galleries. Owner Charles King’s longstanding commitment to building relationships with established and up-and-coming artists, particularly Pueblo potters, has been amazing to witness. To see striking ceramics and meet the people who create them is incredible. This year 15 artists—the best of the best—will be in attendance.

They include Santa Clara Pueblo potters Tammy Garcia, Dolores Curran, Nathan Youngblood, Autumn Borts-Medlock, Stephanie Tafoya, Jennifer Tafoya, Chris Youngblood and Joseph Lugo, as well as Jared Tso (Navajo), Les Namingha (Hopi-Tewa/Zuni), Al Qöyawayma (Hopi), Daniel Begay (Navajo/Santa Clara Pueblo), Steve Lucas (Hopi), Robert Patricio (Acoma), and Mavasta Honyouti (Hopi). The opening reception will be held on Friday, August 18, from 3:00 to 5:00 pm at King Galleries Santa Fe. kinggalleries.com BELOW. We Are Warriors, Australia Who comes to mind when you think of your childhood role models? I recently learned about We Are Warriors (WAW), an uplifting, Australia-based campaign dedicated to celebrating Blak excellence and empowering Indigenous youth. Blak and Blackfulla are terms with which Australia’s Indigenous peoples, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, have long identified. Statistics on the WAW’s website show that, while First Nations people make up less than 5 percent of the Australian population, Indigenous youth account for 80 percent of imprisoned 10-year-olds in the country.

Founded by Australian rapper Nooky (Yuin), We Are Warriors is dedicated to fighting systemic racism

through partnerships with Indigenous role models. By sharing their own stories of resilience and success, they hope to inspire Indigenous youth and prevent their disproportionate incarceration.

Every kid deserves a bright and successful future, and the folks at We Are Warriors are doing amazing things to help make dreams come true. wearewarriors.com.au

above, top The Museum of Modern Art Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. Photo: Carly Gaebe/Steadfast Studio. ©2023 The Museum of Modern Art. above, bottom Pottery by Les Namingha (Hopi-Tewa/Zuni) and Steve Lucas (Hopi). Photo: Charles King. Image courtesy of King Galleries, Santa Fe.

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SEVEN DIRECTIONS

CENTER. Pablo Abeita: The Life and Times of a Native Statesman of Isleta Pueblo, 1871–1940

above, top We Are Warriors graphic from their website. wearewarriors.com.au. above, bottom Pablo Abeita: The Life and Times of a Native Statesman of Isleta Pueblo, 1871–1940, by Malcolm Ebright and Rick Hendricks, published by the University of New Mexico Press, 2023.

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My family, culture, and ancestral homelands have always been the center of my universe. Growing up, we often heard stories about many relatives, but one person in particular was our great-great-grandfather, Pablo Abeita, who was a leader of Isleta Pueblo, and, as the publisher explains, “a man considered as the most important Native leader in the Southwest in his day.”

He was my maternal grandfather’s grandpa and someone who held a strong voice for not only our people but for many of the Pueblos and other people of New Mexico. Quite a bit has been written about my great-great-grandfather throughout the years, but now Malcolm Ebright and Rick Hendricks have compiled a biography. Pablo Abeita: The Life and Times of a Native Statesman of Isleta Pueblo, 1871–1940 contains so many more stories that I had not heard, and even more moving is that the book mentions other family members who were at one time governors of Isleta, including my grandfather Juan B. Abeita, and my grandmother’s father, Esquipula Jojola.

It’s a true blessing to know there are written accounts about my direct ancestors, who paved the way for not only our family but for countless others. I continue to be impressed, inspired, and grateful as I read through this important book.

The University of New Mexico Press published it this summer. unmpress.com

St. Lawrence Island Yupik artist once known, Sanightaaq (Gut Parka), early 20th century, seal gut, walrus gut, auklet crests, seal esophagus, seal fur, cormorant feathers, sinew, thread, red ochre, collection of the Museum of International Folk Art, A.1995.93.986, gift of Lloyd E. Cotsen and Neutrogena Corp. Photo: Addison Doty.

In Ghhúunayúkata / To Keep Them Warm: The Alaska Native Parka at the Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe.

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above Two gut parkas, likely Cup'iq, hang from a clothesline in Mekoryuk, Alaska, 1964. Anchorage Museum, Steve McCutcheon Collection, B1990.14.4.2001. Image courtesy of the Anchorage Museum.

GUTSKIN SEWING IN ALASKA A humble source provides a sophisticated material of beauty and survival

By Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq)

W

HEN THE SUGPIAQ ARTIST June Pardue was a child on Kodiak Island, she remembers her mother sitting her down and showing her how to sew a waterproof stitch, placing grass inside the seam to reinforce it. Decades later in 2022, when June was invited to lead a group of women in building a bear gut parka in Cordova, she says memories of her mother flooded

back to her. “My mother’s hands flashed through my mind and even though I had never made a bear gut parka, I knew I could make one,” she shared with me.

The workshop, she said, was historic and inspiring. “We didn’t have a pattern, but our ancestral memories were there, and the parka just came naturally. All of these women were yearning to be Sugpiaq gut sewers, and now, after this experience, they are.”

In the last few years, Alaska has seen a rise in artists working to revive the legacy of sewing with animal intestines, or gutskins. Alongside the work that June is doing, others are experimenting with gut sewing projects and the many skills that go along with this practice: how to harvest the animal, process the intestine, prepare sinew or embroidery floss for threads, learn the stitches for sewing, and NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 33

above Ivan Suvorov (Unangax̂) wearing a bentwood hat and a chigdax, or gut parka, carrying a large harpoon, Umnak Island, Aleutian Islands, Alaska, 1909, PD. opposite, top Gut parkas in Visceral: Verity, Legacy, Identity; Alaska Native Gut Knowledge and Perseverance at the Alaska State Museum, Juneau. Photo: N. Jackinsky-Sethi.

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make the patterns. During the summer of 2022, Anfesia Tutikoff (Unangax̂) from Unalaska started making a chigdax, an Unangan gutskin parka, using models from the Museum of the Aleutians as a guide. “My great-grandmother had been known to make them. I have always been internally drawn to the chigdax, this amazingly beautiful and important piece

of lifesaving clothing,” she answered when I asked what inspired her project.

On Saint Lawrence Island, Elaine Kingeekuk (St. Lawrence Island Yupik) grew up watching her mother sew gut and bird skin parkas. Today she uses this knowledge to teach gut sewing workshops and continues to learn about gut practices by studying museum collections. When working with gut, “I could hear the ancestors speaking to me like the memories in my heart,” Kingeekuk says.

In Anchorage, Sonya KelliherCombs (Iñupiaq/Athabascan) has been working with natural gut and synthetic polymer as part of ongoing conceptual artwork. Using marine mammal gut is “part of who I am and where I come from,” she says.1 In May 2023, Sonya opened Visceral: Verity, Legacy, Identity, a three-part exhibition that she co-curated with Ellen Carrlee at the Alaska State Museum that highlights Alaska Native gut sewing practices.

Gutskins have been used to create warm, waterproof, windproof, and lightweight garments in the North for centuries, not only in Alaska but also in Canada, Greenland, and the Russian Far East. Made from the intestines of marine mammals such as harbor seal, ugruk (bearded seal), sea lion, whale, walrus, and, in some areas bear, gutskin is a resourceful way to use the byproduct of an animal who is harvested for subsistence.2 When wearing a gut parka, a person can keep comfortable and warm while paddling in a kayak, tide pooling, or otherwise spending time in wet environments. Mary Tunuchuk (Yup'ik) makes seal gut parkas for her sons and husband in Chefornak. She explains that gut parkas are preferred to commercial rain gear because, unlike most synthetic rain gear, gutskin is porous and allows vapors from sweat to escape the garment. According to Mary, “Those seal gut rain parkas will

1. Clarise Larson, “It’s a part of who I am,” Juneau Empire, March 4, 2023, web.

2. Museum collections records rarely record the species of animal from whom gut material came. Museum conservators, like Ellen Carrlee at the Alaska State Museum, are working to improve collections records by analyzing the DNA in small samples. Ellen shared that her research has helped change the understanding of parkas. For example, DNA analysis found that more parkas are made from bear gut than was previously known.

keep a person warm. Even though they are short, they are much better than those commercial rain gear. My two sons and now his two sons are wearing it when they are seal hunting.”3 In addition to their use during subsistence activities, gut parkas have been used ceremonially. On Saint Lawrence Island, whaling captains’ wives wore them when a boat returned to shore after a bowhead whale harvest.4 Some communities considered gut to be a spiritually protective covering, and oral histories relate that shamans wore them when communicating with spirits.

Alma Keyes (Yup'ik) remembers seeing gut parkas worn by a masked dancer when she was a child. “Once I saw a shaman performing a ritual.… Since he wasn’t a great hunter, he lacked his own imarnin [seal gut raincoat] and borrowed somebody else’s. While I watched him, he put on a mask.”5 The sound of gut could

be heard in the spirit world—particularly with drums made from gut (the stomach or the membrane enclosing the liver or heart), the layers of dry gut parkas worn by shamans, and rolls of gut that were thrown like streamers during special events to invite connection with the spirit world.6 Along with using gut for parkas, intestine and other membranes such as esophagus, stomach, bladder, and pericardium (the sac which encloses the heart) were historically used to make bags, wallets, and other containers, hats, drums, blankets, drinking vessels, trousers, and even window coverings.

Today, gut is used as a material for earrings, conceptual artwork, and doll clothing. The material is also sometimes incorporated into basketry. Rolls of intestines are sold at art markets in Alaska, and they tend to sell quickly.

PARKA DESIGN ELEMENTS GUTSKIN PARKAS are typically designed with either vertical or horizontal strips of gut. In the case of horizontally aligned parkas, some are made from a continuous coil of split gut that is sewn with sinew or cotton thread. Most parkas include a hood, and some have a drawstring to allow the wearer to pull the garment tight around the face. Some also have drawstrings around the garment’s cuffs and along the bottom hem of the parka to secure around the hatch of a kayak, much like how a kayaker’s spray skirt is used today.

Parkas are often plain, but some, especially those used for ceremonial occasions, are decorated with dyed esophagus, yarn, hair, feathers, and fur.

On St. Lawrence Island, some gut parkas are decorated with the plumes of crested

3. Mary Tunuchuk, “Sewing Gut (2 of 13): Meet Artist Mary Tunuchuk,” Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, December 17, 2018, YouTube video, 01:39, web.

4. Aron L. Crowell, Living Our Cultures, Sharing our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2010), 92.

5. Marie Meade and Ann Fienup-Riordan, Agayuliyararput: Kegginaqut Kangiit-llu/Our Way of Making Prayer: Yup’ik Masks and the Stories They Tell (Anchorage: Anchorage Museum of History and Art in association with the University of Washington Press, 1996), 55–56.

6. Ellen Carrlee (Alaska State Museum conservator), email message to author, July 2023.

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of the material. It is an art practice that is passed on kinesthetically, as people tend to learn how to prepare and sew gut by observation and hands-on experimentation. While each community has its own way of processing the material, the process typically begins by removing the viscera from the carcass, rinsing the intestine, scraping both the inside and outside surfaces of the gut, and inflating the tissue to dry. The late Rita Blumenstein (Yup'ik, 1936–2021) shared her process as follows:

auklets, small birds with bright orange beaks who are abundant in the north.

“Winter gut” parkas, those made from intestine material that has been freezedried, are recognizable by their white coloring. Parkas made from intestines processed in warmer temperatures are known as “summer gut” and are more translucent.

During the 19th century, some Unangan seamstresses made gut capes in

the style of Euro-American naval officer cloaks. The women sold and traded these, and several examples are exhibited in the National Museum of Finland.

PROCESSING THE GUT WORKING WITH GUT combines generations of knowledge about the use

When you open the seal, you take the membrane out; it’s in a coil. You get it home, and what a woman does first, she cleans the inside. She fills it with water and squeezes it out by hand. (The [part of the] gut [used for textiles] is inside the intestine). Then she fills it with water and washes it again. Then after they wash it real good, they take the outer part off.

There’s a thick layer of it. This part you use for eating. Then you work on the gut.… Then after you scrape it with a clam shell, you soak it in urine overnight. Then you take it out and rinse it again, and you put it in a soap solution. In my time, we used Naptha. And you rinse it out in the water, fill it with water, and clean it real good. And then, when you’re ready for it, two or three women and girls go outside when it’s not windy, but breezy and sunshiny and go to the fish rack where you’re going to hang it, and you blow into it with air. And then you stretch it out and wrap it on those fish racks, and then you dry it that way, or you do it in a long strip.6 I had an opportunity to observe a bear gut processing demonstration led

by Sven Haakanson (Alutiiq) at Juneau’s Alaska State Museum in May 2023. After the intestine was rinsed, community volunteers scraped the intestine with metal spoons. I tried my hand at scraping the gut and was surprised by

6. Pat Hickman, Innerskins Outerskins: Gut and Fishskin (San Francisco: San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum, 1988), 25–26.

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above Florence Napaaq Malewotkuk (St. Lawrence Island Yupik, 1906–1971), Illustration of a Man and Woman Wearing Fancy Gut Parkas, 1928, ink on paper, collection of the University of Alaska Museum of the North, UA2004-048-001. Image courtesy of the University of Alaska Museum of the North. left "Native [Inupiaq] fisherman in rainy day costume, Nome," ca. 1899.

Photo: Wilhelm Hester, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, PH Coll 318.1077. opposite Frances Usugan (Yup'ik), holding dried seal gut, Toksook Bay. Photo: James H. Barker, Fairbanks, jamesbarker-photography.com.

Image courtesy of the photographer.

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The use of the material reinforces common values like being resourceful, working together, and connecting to the environment.

above Doll with gutskin parka playing drum. Image courtesy of the Museum of International Folk Art. opposite Gutskin parka with dyed wool fur. Image courtesy of the Museum of International Folk Art.

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how hardy the material was. Scraping away the inner and outer membrane of the 70-foot intestine took roughly three hours (with 50 people working on it).

After this, the intestine was rinsed out again using a hose and inflated to dry.

Eventually, this processed gut will be used as a material to create a new bear gut parka.

From my experience learning about and working with gut, I can see that it is a practice that brings people together and represents a system of shared labor and skills. The use of the material reinforces common values like being resourceful, working together, and connecting to the environment.

Being resourceful is integral to subsistence practices in Alaska. When harvesting for subsistence, nothing is wasted. If a walrus is harvested, for example, the tusks and bones can make tools and art. The skin may be a boat’s covering. The stomach may become a drum. The meat may be distributed

within a community and shared as valued subsistence food. When gut is used as a craft material, it continues the practice and values of being resourceful.

Working together is a hallmark of Alaska Native communities. Our communities depend on people having diverse skill sets. Gut sewing requires individuals with the knowledge and skill needed to harvest and butcher an animal, process the materials, and complete the sewing. Historically, these diverse skills were often divided by gender, although these gender divisions are no longer as apparent.

Connection to the environment includes Alaskan subsistence practices that link people to the lands, waters, and animals who sustain our communities.

Cultural practices related to subsistence, including gut sewing, remind us of the importance of being good stewards so that the resources we have will continue for generations to come.

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above Wearing a seal gut parka, Jesse Paul (Yup'ik) from Kipnuk collects herring eggs deposited on seaweed, Nelson Island, 1981.

Photo: James H. Barker. Image courtesy of the photographer.

FUTURE OF GUTSKIN EARLIER PUBLICATIONS about gut sewing practices in Alaska lamented the dwindling number of individuals working with gut. From what I observe in Alaska today, however, an increasing number of individuals are growing their skills with this material. I anticipate the future will bring even more artists who include gut in their practice. We face new challenges maintaining the heritage of gut skin sewing. Environmental crises have affected access to many of the animals we historically harvested and used for gut sewing. Global warming has created challenges for hunters to be able to safely harvest some marine mammals like walrus and bearded seal, who are dependent upon healthy sea ice. Laws such as

the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 restrict the right to harvest and use marine mammal products, as only coastal-dwelling Alaska Native peoples who can prove they have a minimum of one-quarter blood quantum are legally allowed to work with this material.7 To maintain gut sewing practices, we will need to ensure that our communities continue to have the ability and the right to access these animals who have long sustained us.

To see historic examples of gut materials, a few notable exhibitions are displaying gut skin parkas this year. In Juneau, the Alaska State Museum hosts Visceral: Verity, Legacy, Identity, on display through October 18, 2023. In Santa Fe, the Museum of International Folk Art hosts Ghhúunayúkata / To Keep Them Warm: The Alaska Native Parka,

7. “Alaska Native Handicrafts/Marine Mammals,” US Fish and Wildlife Service, web.

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co-curated by Melissa Shaginoff (Ahtna Athabascan/Northern Paiute) and Suzi Jones, which includes gut parkas along with many other parkas. This will be on view through April 7, 2024. Many museums hold gutskin artworks in their permanent collections and images are often searchable online.

Artists currently working with intestine materials include Taytum Xanix Robinson (Unangax̂), Brooke Mallory (Eyak), Coral Chernoff (Alutiiq), Arlene Annogiyuk Waghiyi (St. Lawrence Island Yupik), Glenda McKay (Deg Xit'an), and others who are exploring gut practices.

June Pardue is mentoring this next generation of gutskin textile artists. By sharing what her mother passed down to her, June sustains an unbroken chain of ancestral knowledge that will extend far into the future.

TRIBES GALLERY Art & Appraisals

Benjamin Harjo, Jr. (Absentee Shawnee/Seminole, 1945–2023), oh! deer!, 2003, gouache on paper.

In Loving Memory Benjamin Harjo, Jr., 1945–2023 512 W. Main St., Norman, OK 73069 | 405.329.4442 | tribes131.com NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 41

GUTSKIN BY GLENDA McKAY

B

ORN IN ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Glenda McKay (Deg Xit'an) grew up in Chugiak and on the land that would become Denali National Park. Her grandmother and mother were both subsistence hunters and skin sewers who passed their hunting, hide-tanning, sewing, beading, and doll-making skills on to Glenda.

She first exhibited her dolls in 2002 and began showing in museums in 2006. Her smallest dolls have been one-and-a-half to two inches, but most are between five and six inches tall. She sews full-sized beaded items, such as octopus bags and bandolier bags as well. However, with the dolls and their miniature clothing, tool kits, kayaks, and baskets, all of the guts, hides, pelts, and other natural supplies go much further.

Besides hunting, Glenda and her husband Cliff, who now split their time between New Mexico and Alaska, often find fossilized walrus and mammoth ivory and whalebone when hiking.

Usually the only commercial items in her artworks are thread and glass beads, which include antique 22° microbeads.

Glenda just won Best of Show at the 2023 Eiteljorg Indian Market and Festival.

Previously she won Best of Show at the Santa Fe Indian Market in 2020 and the Cherokee Art Market in 2016 and 2021, as well as numerous best of classification awards. She was a 2013 School for Advanced Research artist fellow and a 2016–17 Institute of American Indian Arts artist-in-residence. Home and Away Gallery in Maine represents her, and she will have booth PAL N 221 at the SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market. above, left

Glenda McKay

(Deg Xit'an), Miniature Parka, 2016, walrus stomach, bleached sealskin fringe, berry-dyed seal intestine, beluga whale sinew ties, glass seed beads, 3½ in. tall.

Glenda McKay (Deg Xit'an), Miniature Red Parka, 2 0 1 9 , b e r r y - d ye d wa l r u s stomach, bleached sealskin fringe, berry-dyed seal intestine, 3½ in. tall. left

42 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

The Institute of American Indian The Institute of American Arts (IAIA) inIndian Santa Fe, NM, is the Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, NM, only college in is thethe world dedicated only college intothe theworld studydedicated of contemporary Native to the study ofAmerican contemporary NativeNative arts and and Alaska American andserves Alaskaboth Native arts and and non-Native Native serves both Native and non-Native American students. IAIA offers American students.

IAIA offof ersFine Arts (MFA) three Master three Master of Fine Arts (MFA) all of which are graduate degrees, graduate degrees, all oflow which are programs. two-year residency two-year low residency programs.

IAIA’s low residency model provides IAIA’s low residency modeldegrees provideswhile allowing professional professional degrees allowing studentswhile to live at home and students to live at homeparticipating and continue in work, continue participating in work, family, and community. family, and community.

MFA in Cultural MFA in Cultural Administration (MFACA) Administration (MFACA)

above Glenda McKay (Deg Xit'an), Medium Basket, 2020, gutskin, shaved sealskin trim, 18° glass seed beads, Russian trade beads (dug up in Point Hope, Alaska), dentalium shells, 5 × 4½ in. All images courtesy of the artist. below Glenda McKay (Deg Xit'an), detail of Beauty from Within (interior view), 2021, walrus stomach, sealskin trim, moose hide, Russian trade beads, glass seed beads, gold beads, dentalium shells.

Focused on social equity Focused on social equity and the support of cultural and the support of cultural community growth, MFACA community growth, MFACA integrates administrative tools integrates administrative tools and techniques with socially and techniques with socially engaged leadership by blending engaged leadership by blending institutional skills and community institutional outreach skills andprogramming. community The two outreach programming.

The two tracks are Tribal Museum and tracks are Tribal Museum and Cultural Center Administration or Cultural Center ArtsAdministration Administration.or Arts Administration.

MFA in Creative MFA in Creative Writing (MFACW) Writing (MFACW)

MFACW is unique in that we MFACW is unique in thatthe weimportance of emphasize emphasize the importance of speaking Indigenous writers Indigenous writers speaking experience. to the Indigenous to the Indigenous experience.

The literature used in the The literatureprogram used incarries the a distinct Native program carries a distinct American and Native First Nations American and First Nations emphasis. MFACW offers four emphasis. MFACW ers four poetry, areas ofoffemphasis: areas of emphasis: fiction,poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, creative nonfi ction, and screenwriting. and screenwriting.

MFA in Studio MFA in Studio Arts (MFASA) Arts (MFASA)

By engaging with complex By engaging histories with complex and examining art’s histories andfunction examining art’s in contemporary function in contemporary multicultural societies, multiculturalMFASA societies, supports students in MFASA supports students in lines of inquiry pursuing critical pursuing critical lines of inquiry and developing their individual and developing their individual art practices. art practices.

Learn more and apply Learn moretoday and apply at www.iaia.edu NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 43 today at www.iaia.edu

LEGACIES OF BLACK-&-WHITE PUEBLO POTTERY

By Michelle J. Lanteri, PhD

O

F THE MANY varieties of Pueblo pottery, blackand-white vessels create a common thread between several communities including Pojoaque, Tesuque, Nambé, Acoma, Cochiti, San Ildefonso, and Santa Clara Pueblos. This style connects ancestral wares with those of the 19th century to the present day and beyond. Originally used for domestic and ceremonial purposes, black-and-white ceramics, like many styles of Pueblo pottery, gained an additional function

in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an artistic purpose that conveyed Indigenous worldviews to a burgeoning tourist economy. These later pots made for the tourist trade or as artworks were not designed as utilitarian items designed to hold water. But like their predecessors, they invited handling and visual appreciation as they passed on their stories into the future.

Pueblo artists also continued to make utilitarian monochrome vessels with water-oriented designs that could

hold water for community use through the turn of the 20th century. During the same era, ceramics made for sale carried on the legacy of black-and-white Pueblo pottery with water symbolism through forms, such as the olla or water jar. Different uses of black-and-white Pueblo pottery continue to exist today.

Through the pottery’s role of artistic expression, Pueblo artists have developed new methods of construction, varying mixtures of clay, and endless takes on black-and-white designs.

LOOKING BACK TO LOOK FORWARD IN RECENT YEARS, two major projects in northern New Mexico have connected ancestral and historical Pueblo pottery with 21st-century makers. These initiatives are Di Wae Powa: Return of Historic Tewa Pottery at the Poeh Cultural Center in Pojoaque in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, DC, and Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery, created through a partnership between the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture and the School for Advanced Research (SAR), 44 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

both in Santa Fe, and the Vilcek Foundation in New York City. In both of these outreach-driven exhibitions, the older vessels wanted to come home or embark on a traveling voyage and be in relationship with their 21st-century descendants: the work by today’s Pueblo potters and creative minds participating in these intergenerational projects. For these exhibitions, the organizing institutions invited Pueblo community members to visit and form bonds with the elder vessels, thus opening new connections between past and present pottery styles, many of which feature black-and-white designs.

Di Wae Powa: Return of Historic Tewa Pottery presents a model of costewardship between the Poeh Cultural Center, Pueblo community members, and the NMAI, who is loaning the vessels long-term for this ongoing exhibition.

This project connects Tewa potters with the 1850s to 1930s-era Tewa pots that have come home. Within this group of historical wares, several varieties feature black-and-white pottery designs, which are likely comprised of earthenware clays with white slip and black made from beeweed, also called wild spinach.

On a monochromatic canteen with a cultural designation of “Santa Fe,” stepped patterns at the lower left meet at a center line, with other abstract designs in its upper half. Its design could suggest lightning, emblematic of its water-carrying form, a common thread throughout this exhibition. I can’t help but wonder if this canteen once held water, but its current function is that of an art form.

Several ollas in the exhibition further emphasize the centrality of water to the Southwest. A San Ildefonso Pueblo olla features stemmed floral designs around its entire body, from shoulder to low belly. Across the gallery, a small spherical, black-and-white vessel with a neck rising upward on one side features two visible designs: a linear pattern of columns filled with horizontal tick marks on the rounded portion and a stepped pattern on the neck, both of

which could allude to symbols of water or rain. The shape and condition of this piece also suggest it could have been an effigy with a more extended body than what is extant today.

The group of vessels featured in Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery are from the collections of SAR and the Vilcek Foundation. The exhibition began its tour at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe and continues to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Vilcek Foundation in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri. The black-and-white collections feature ancestral and historical wares, of which several are ollas.

Potter Russell Sanchez (San Ildefonso Pueblo) believes a San Ildefonso terraced water jar (ca. 1860–1920) with black designs on white slip “sat in the corner of a room” and was used for “dipping a drink of water or for preparing

… the organizing institutions invited Pueblo community members to visit and form bonds with the elder vessels …

above Ancestral Pueblo artist once known, Socorro Blackon-White Storage Jar, ca.

1050–1100, clay, pigment, New Mexico, 15 × 17 in., collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019.456.21, The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of Native American Art, gift of Charles and Valerie Diker, PD. opposite Ancestral Pueblo artist once known, Mug, 12th–14th century, ceramic, pigment, Mesa Verde, Colorado, 37/8 × 43/16 in., collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 92.2.2, gift of Kate Wells, PD.

1. Pueblo Pottery Collective, Elysia Poon, and Rick Kinsel, Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery (London: Merrell, 2022), 236–37.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 45

THE CHINO FAMILY OF ACOMA PUEBLO

above Marie Z. Chino (Acoma, 1907–1982), Long Neck Jar with Bird Wing Design, 1960s, clay, pigment, 12 in. high. Photo: Charles King. Image courtesy of King Galleries. opposite, top Eric Lewis (Acoma), Majestic, 2020, Acoma clay, slips pigment, 9 in. high. Photo: Charles King. Image courtesy of King Galleries. opposite, bottom Eric Lewis (Acoma), Large Hummingbird Jar, 2022, Acoma clay, slips pigment, 8 in. high. Photo: Charles King. Image courtesy of King Galleries.

meals.”1 This olla marks another transitional time for Pueblo pottery and features a raincloud design on its terraced back wall with a wavy pair of lines at its waist that could indicate a river.

Grounded in Clay also features a jar (ca. 1920–25) by Juanita Johnson (Acoma, ca. 1883–after 1939) that appears to be the pueblo’s grey clay with white slip and black pigment made from beeweed and hematite.2 This wide-shouldered vessel with a large mouth bears a repeating black-and-white design of large spirals encased within terraces. The design suggests patterns of migration that depend on water. The base of the jar is a burnished red clay slip, which could signify the south or the sun.3

GROUNDED IN CLAY includes a much more recent olla (ca. 1985) by Carrie Chino Charlie (Acoma, 1925–2012), daughter of pottery matriarch and legendary Santa Fe Indian Market artist Marie Z. Chino (Acoma, 1907–1982).4 It features a black rim and the Chino family’s fine-line, signature design of diagonal and perpendicular linear sections. The overall scheme evokes a patchwork of leaves. The family’s hallmark is a linebased floral or asterisk with additional sections of lines in the negative spaces.

These designs that fill the entire surface of the jar create a kaleidoscopic composition for the eye and mind to explore.

The vessel’s waist features the largest motifs, and the entire design creates a sense of motion. This work of art for art’s sake speaks to another pattern in the history of black-and-white Pueblo pottery, that of familial legacy.

The Chinos are one of the most well-known families of Acoma Pueblo, celebrated for their black-and-white pottery. From one generation to the next, they created and experimented with ceramics primarily as artwork.

Marie Z. Chino and her descendants are known for combining intricate webs of designs with the olla shape. They apply fine-line patterns freehand with yucca brushes, and for evenness of the lines, one of her daughters, Grace Chino (Acoma, 1929–1994), used straight edges of paper. The masses of featherweight lines convey patience, accuracy, and the ability to envision details within a larger composition without being pre-drawn.

These skills begin with the labor-intensive processing of the clay.

A key step of mixing the Acoma grey clay body is adding ground potsherds from previous pieces to strengthen

2. Pueblo Pottery Collective, Poon, and Kinsel, Grounded in Clay, 200–01; Stephen Trimble, Talking with the Clay: The Art of Pueblo Pottery in the Twenty-First Century (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research, 2007), 88, 90.

3. Trimble, Talking with the Clay, 90.

4. Pueblo Pottery Collective, Poon, and Kinsel, Grounded in Clay, 134–35; National Museum of Women in the Arts, “Marie Zieu Chino,” web. Chino won an award at the 1922 Santa Fe Indian Market when she was 15.

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the walls so that they can be coiled and smoothed into thin forms. This thinness becomes more accentuated in early 20th-century vessels to the present day, and its use in the olla is also a distinctive feature of the Chino family’s pottery.

A NEW SPIN ON ACOMA BLACK-&WHITE POTTERY ERIC LEWIS (ACOMA), son of potter Sharon Garcia-Lewis (Acoma), creates artistic ollas painted with thick, geometric lines reminiscent of tattoo art and central pictorial images. King Galleries represents him. In Majestic (2022), a male deer looks out at viewers, with his face and antlers seamlessly painted into the linear designs surrounding it, perhaps a forest.

These branch-like designs gesture toward the deer who appears to be hiding in plain sight, and create an inextricably interdependent composition. This design, which depends on a generous amount of negative space, highlights the centrality of sky and water.

Lewis’s series of hummingbird ollas, including Large Hummingbird Jar (2022), offers a similar composition but with less negative space than Majestic.

He positioned the flying hummingbird among branches and flowers, its wings outstretched. Since the wings do not overlap with the surrounding linear designs, the environment appears to hold space for the hummingbird to coexist with the flowering trees and plants it depends on for its survival.

Both vessels recall photographic moments in their offerings. Majestic’s composition alludes to a caught glimpse exchanged with a buck through the trees. Similarly, the Large Hummingbird Jar expresses an instant that cannot be seen by the human eye but could only be captured by a camera lens.

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WHEN THE OLD IS NEW

above, top Lorraine Gala Lewis (Laguna Pueblo/Taos/Hopi-Tewa), Snake Effigy, 2019, clay, natural pigments, natural stains, acrylic paint, 19 in. long. Photo: Charles King. Image courtesy of King Galleries. above, bottom Lorraine Gala Lewis (Laguna Pueblo/Taos/Hopi-Tewa), Mimbres Classic Jar, 2019, clay, natural pigments, natural stains, acrylic paint, 8 in. high. Photo: Charles King. Image courtesy of King Galleries. opposite Diego Romero (Cochiti), Siege of Santa Fe, 2009, terra cotta, pigment, 7¼ × 157/8 in., collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art, 2010.21, museum purchase with funds from the Boeckman Acquisition Fund and the Clinton King Purchase Award.

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LORRAINE GALA LEWIS (Laguna Pueblo/Taos/Hopi-Tewa) models her artistic pottery on Ancestral Pueblo pottery styles, such as Tularosa or Mesa Verde. This involves adorning whiteslipped effigies and domestic wares with geometric designs in black pigment that originally date from 1150 to 1325 CE in the Southern Colorado Plateau. Lewis looks at the Tularosa and Mesa Verde styles of pottery making as important art histories to study and reinterpret in a present-day context.

In her artistic process, Lewis creates the illusion of great age by making incised “cracks” and “patina” with pigments and stains. She blends local and commercial clays, coils by hand, and kiln-fires her vessels. She finds that some aspects of this style of pottery building preserve the vessel during firing. Of her guiding forces, she says, “My medium is my ancestors.”5 For Rattlesnake Effigy (Tularosa 950–1150 CE), Lewis created a curled-up reptile, its tail connected to its head 5. Lorraine Gala Lewis, “SW REFLECTIONS: ‘Mirrored Reflections; Ancestral Influences in Art’ Roundtable,” Millicent Rogers Museum, aired on October 9, 2022, YouTube video, 35:24.

with what looks like a blowhole on top of it to prevent explosions during the firing process. An historical Santa Clara Pueblo pot featured in Di Wae Powa shares a similar shape. Lewis painted a trio of designs on her effigy that suggest the importance of rain, a checkerboard between two zigzags. On the snake’s head, fine lines surround the eyes, and a triangular pattern marks the nostrils above the mouth.

In Mesa Verde Ladle (1000–1100 CE), Lewis applies the same technologies and coiling as she did for Rattlesnake Effigy. The ladle form carries water in its bowl, which Lewis emblazoned with alternating sections of zigzag lines and horizontal line stacks that allude to the nourishing power of rain. On its handle, four sets of outlined squares, each enclosing a pair of double-triangle motifs, span the handle from base to end. The forms could indicate mountains, and the number suggests the four directions.

NARRATIVE DRAMA EMERGES FROM BLACK-&WHITE DESIGNS DIEGO ROMERO (Cochiti) makes large clay bowls with pictorial scenes inspired by Mimbres black-and-white pottery. Mimbres culture dates from the 8th to 12th centuries CE from what is now southern New Mexico. Using dark brown and white pigments, he blends his Mimbres-inspired figures in profile with abstract rim designs influenced by ancient Greek pottery to portray scenes from his life or historical Pueblo milestones. Romero has created numerous narrative vessels that, in effect, transport a visual record of Pueblo history to local, sometimes global, contexts in their original, printed, and virtual forms.

Romero’s Siege of Santa Fe (2009) depicts a critical moment of Pueblo strength and triumph during the takeover of Santa Fe in the 1680 Pueblo Revolt that

forced the Spanish conquistadors south.

The rim of the bowl features zigzags, like those on Lorraine Gala Lewis’s ladle. The center section shows Pueblo warriors fighting Spanish soldiers. Romero borrows skin tone technique from the ancient Greeks. He renders Pueblo men with dark brown pigment and lighter linear accents; the Spaniards have lighter skin with dark brown accents. This designation offers a way for viewers to identify the different characters in this narrative drama.

In the background of Siege of Santa Fe, a cross and Mission-style bell sit atop an adobe church, providing an architectural context of the period. The artist frames three scenes of hand-to-hand combat with zigzag designs along the inside edge of the bowl. Through scale, Romero portrays depth of field with larger figures in the foreground.

Romero’s process blends Native clays with high-temperature kiln-firing.

Through the medium of pottery, Romero

builds upon Pueblo technologies while connecting to cross-cultural methods of storytelling. Of his pots, he states, “I want them to last, to be around hundreds of years from now.”6

INTO THE FUTURE FOR PUEBLO BLACK-AND-WHITE POTTERY, the process of looking back to look forward continues to generate new designs and technologies. The work of the Chino family, Eric Lewis, Lorraine Gala Lewis, and Diego Romero reveals a pattern of blended abstraction and representation, found often in the design and vessel shapes with references to water and rain. And with Pueblo pottery, the creation of ceramics bridges these moments of spiral migrations that return and reunite to offer messages, guidance, and sustenance across generations and in any context that arises. This is the legacy of Pueblo pottery.

6. Trimble, Talking with the Clay, 72.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 49

The Indian Arts and Crafts Board offers a Source Directory of American Indian and Alaska Native Owned and Operated Arts and Crafts Businesses that sell authentic Indian art and craftwork, which is available at doi.gov/iacb.

Under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act (Act), it is unlawful to offer or display for sale, or sell, any art or craft product in a manner that falsely suggests it is Indian produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian or Indian tribe or Indian arts and crafts organization.

For a free brochure on the Act, including how to file a complaint, please contact: U.S. Department of the Interior Indian Arts and Crafts Board Toll Free: 1-888-ART-FAKE or 1-888-278-3253 Email: iacb@ios.doi.gov Web: doi.gov/iacb

Kathy Dickerson, Kiowa, Kiowa Women’s Boots, ©2005 50 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

Explore the evolution of Indigenous patterns and artistic principles On view through Oct. 23 Admission is always free.

11 NW 11th St., OKC | okcontemp.org | @okcontemporary

Installation view of Patterns of Knowing featuring Jordan Ann Craig’s Ladybugs Are Birds, 2018, Wallpaper I, 2018 and Wallpaper II: Eat Flowers for Powers, 2023. Photo: A.J. Stegall.

JAYCEE NAHOHAI comes from a family well known for their innovative pottery. Jaycee is the first son of influential clay artists Rowena Him and the late Randy Nahohai. He is the grandson of Josephine Nahohai and nephew of Milford Nahohai, both of whom are also renowned potters.

Kolowisi Jar Jaycee Nahohai, Zuni Pueblo

Jaycee is widely known for his owls of which he makes many styles. Like his father Randy, Jaycee pushes the limits when it comes to Zuni pottery.

Jaycee has studied pottery at the Idylwild Arts Academy in Californa, and in Japan with several master Japanese potters.

The shape of the jar, shown at left, is influenced by Japanese Bizen ware. His work is in the permanent collections of many museums.

Since 1981 Fetishes Jewelry Pottery 227 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe Keshi.com 505.989.8728

Natural clay with mineral pigments 10 ½˝ tall, 5 ¾˝ diameter

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 51

BARNIZ DE PASTO The Magic of Colombia's Mopa Mopa

By Madeline Sobral (Cherokee Nation)

I

N THE ANDES MOUNTAINS of South America grows the mysterious mopa mopa tree. Twice per year, these flowering plants in the Rubiaceae family produce a strong and versatile resin, a substance that artists have been transforming into colorful inlaid artwork in the Putumayo and Nariño departments of Colombia for an estimated 1,000 years or more.1 Mopa mopa is also known in Spanish as barniz de Pasto, which translates in English to “varnish from

Pasto,” a city and an Indigenous people of Colombia. Through a meticulous, laborious, and lengthy process, artists turn this resin into an almost luminescent lacquer used to adhere to and embellish decorative, ceremonial, and utilitarian objects. Once harvesters collect the mopa mopa resin leaves, which is a demanding skill of its own, artists clean, boil, beat, dye, and stretch the rubbery substance.

Then, with care and steady hands, they cut, place, and bind the resin to their object of choice. Vibrant colors and

intricate patterns stretch across surfaces of all shapes and sizes, and the final product conveys a longstanding, durable technique that has been passed down for generations.

TRANSFORMING BUDS INTO ART PREPARING THE PASTO VARNISH for mopa mopa artwork requires

1. Richard Newman, Emily Kaplan, and Maria Cecilia Álvarez-White, “The Story of Elaeagia Resin (Mopa-Mopa), So Far,” Heritage 6, no. 5 (May 2023): 4320–44.

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precision, patience, and several days.

While this art form is practiced outside of Colombia, in 2011 the Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio de Colombia established that Mopa Mopa Barniz de Pasto is a protected name.2 This means that the authentic art form uniquely comes from Colombia.

To begin, the artist must clean the harvested block of resin thoroughly to remove impurities like bark and other plant debris. The resin is submerged over and over again in boiling water. After each dunk, debris is removed with fingernails, and the resin is macerated with force to continually soften it, sometimes with a flowerpot against an anvil.

Once the resin is clean, beaten, and boiled, it transforms into an olive-green mass. Before machinery, the material was macerated again through chewing. The addition of a hand mill has quickened this part of the process, if only slightly, though some artists still use manual methods.

At this stage the artist has the option to dye the resin using powdered vegetal or aniline dyes. The resin mass is once again dipped into boiling water, and the dye is added quickly before the mass cools. The artist then kneads the resin thoroughly to ensure evenly distributed color and consistent texture.

The dyed resin is boiled once again in palm-sized portions before it is stretched into thin, large, and slightly transparent sheets of a flexible rubber-like substance. The lengthy and repetitive boiling is essential to the process as it increases the resin’s malleability. Typically two artists will work together to carefully stretch the material, using the heat of their hands, gentle finger manipulation, and their teeth to slowly expand the surface area of the resin into large, thin, colorful sheets.

Once the sheets are prepared, the artist can begin cutting intricate designs using sharp scalpels. These designs can

above Three finished barniz de Pasto trays by Taller Granja.

Photo: Óscar O. Granja (Pastuso).

Image courtesy of Taller Granja. opposite Gilberto Granja and Óscar O. Granja stretching out gold-pigmented mopa mopa varnish. Photo: Pablo Andrés Villota @pablovillotaph. Image courtesy of Taller Granja, i.e.

Granja Workshop.

2. “La Superindustria en el corazón de las Denominaciones de Origen,” Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio, 2021, web.

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ensures the longevity of the artwork. Its smooth, glossy, and vibrant appearance adds to the magical allure associated with the mopa mopa tree and its resin.

THE HARVESTERS’ EXPERTISE

above Quechua artist once known, Kero, late 17th century, Peru, escallonia wood, mopa mopa resin inlay, 85/8 in., collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.35.26, bequest of Arthur M. Bullowa, 1993, PD.

The facial paint on this man identifies him as being of the Anti, an Indigenous people who lives on the eastern Andes into the rain tropical forests.

be applied to various objects, including wood, glass, metal, and clay. The cut-out design pieces are secured to the objects using heat, often from the artist’s own hands and sometimes various types of glue. Multiple layers of different colors can be overlaid to create depth and complexity in the artwork.

The final, cooled mopa mopa piece is not only visually stunning but also possesses remarkable properties. Mopa mopa resin is durable, waterproof, and resistant to most organic solvents, which

THE ART OF MOPA MOPA goes beyond the skill of the artist alone. It relies on the knowledge and expertise of the harvesters who collect the buds of the mopa mopa tree’s leaves. Their understanding of the geographical landscape, harvesting practices, and timing of the plant’s life cycle is crucial to the sustainability of the art form.

The essential resin is harvested, not cultivated, from the mopa mopa tree, which was classified in 1973 with the scientific name of Elaeagia pastoensis by the esteemed Colombian botanist Luis Eduardo Mora-Osejo.3 Centuries before European contact and passed down through generations, the harvest of the resin draws upon deep understanding of the mopa mopa tree itself. Not only must the harvesters know where to access the trees and the precise size and maturity of the buds suitable to harvest, but they must also delicately remove the buds to avoid permanent damage to the tree itself. Teams of harvesters, usually from a single extended family, travel and live in the wilderness for several days as they work together, share inherited knowledge, meticulously collect buds, and continually press them together to form blocks of resin large enough to be delivered to the barniz de Pasto artists.

The collaboration between the harvesters and the artists is a testament to the interconnectedness of the mopa mopa art form. It highlights the importance of intergenerational sharing of knowledge, communal practices, and the relationship between humans and nature. Without the expertise and dedication of the harvesters, the creation of barniz de Pasto artworks would not be possible.

3. Eduardo Muñoz Lora, “Pasto Varnish or Mopa-Mopa,” Technic, web.

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FROM ANCIENT ADHESIVE TO CULTURAL EXPRESSION IN PRE-HISPANIC COLOMBIA AND PERU, the mopa mopa resin may have found its initial use as an adhesive. It was likely employed to attach feathers to ceremonial plumes, arrowheads and feathers to hunting tools, to create blowpipes, and as an aromatic offering burned during religious ceremonies. Over time, distinct styles emerged. In Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, mopa mopa became associated with Inca kero cups (qero is the Quechua, or language of the Incas, word for both “cup” and “wood”), vessels used for the ritual consumption of maize beer known as chicha.4 The first known European writing about the varnish was from 1543 in 4. Newman, Kaplan, and Álvarez-White, “The Story of Elaeagia Resin (Mopa-Mopa), So Far.”

above, top Artisanal manufacture of varnish objects in the Colombian city of Pasto, Nariño Department. Colombia, South America. Engraving from Journey through Equinoctial America 1875–1876

by Edward Francois Andre. Le Tour du Monde, 1879. Image courtesy of Old Books Images / Alamy Stock Photo.

above, bottom Unprocessed mopa mopa resin. Photo: Pablo Andrés Villota @pablovillotaph.

Image courtesy of Taller Granja.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 55

The blending of Indigenous techniques with outside influences created a unique artistic heritage that carries the legacy of mopa mopa through history.

southwestern Colombia. Conquistadors wrote that while passing through the Mocoa Valley, they admired the various lacquer paintings and the patience of the artists.5 While the exact origins of the term mopa mopa seem to be unknown, the term barniz de Pasto first appeared during the colonial period. Though the term now refers to the resin used to create the artwork, as well as the work itself, the Spanish phrase may have arisen from a lack of understanding of how the artwork was created. Barniz translates from Spanish to the English word varnish, a liquid applied as a coating or a glaze. When mopa mopa is set, it is vibrant and lustrous. Spaniards likely saw the luminous art and believed it was paint coated with varnish rather than the magical transformation that is mopa mopa artwork.

In the 17th century, the city of Pasto in Colombia experienced the

development of lacquered objects characterized by the fusion of European forms and motifs with a strong Asian influence. This influence can be attributed to the trade routes established between Europe, Asia, and the Americas during the viceregal period from 1521 to 1821.

The blending of Indigenous techniques with outside influences created a unique artistic heritage that carries the legacy of mopa mopa through history.

SAFEGUARDING A THREATENED CRAFT ON DECEMBER 15, 2020, barniz de Pasto was added to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Intangible

5. “Colombia Artesanal: Barniz de Pasto, una tradición única en el mundo,” Artesanías de Colombia, March 12, 2021, web.

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Cultural Heritage of Humanity list.

This globally recognized platform aims to safeguard and promote important cultural practices and expressions. It raises awareness about the value of community-based knowledge, skills, techniques, and aesthetics, and ensures its diffusion to future generations.

Barniz de Pasto’s inclusion on the UNESCO list confirms the craft’s rich cultural heritage and its significance in the region. It also highlights the need for urgent safeguarding measures due to various challenges faced by the practice.

A key concern is the increasing scarcity of mopa mopa trees. Deforestation and climate change have impacted the availability of and access to these trees, putting the sustainability of the technique at risk.

Ramifications of globalization have also presented challenges as younger generations are pursuing different industries and locales to work in. This has led to a decline in the number of artisans practicing mopa mopa. According to UNESCO, only ten harvesters and 36 varnish masters currently work with mopa mopa in the Andean region of South America.6

LIVING MASTERS VARNISH MASTERS are highly skilled artists who have dedicated their lives to the mopa mopa technique. Through their virtuosity, they breathe life into the resin and transform it into vibrant pieces of art that reflect the beauty, historical lineage, and enchantment of mopa mopa.

Their dedication and passion not only preserve the practice but also help to inspire and nurture the next generation of artists. Among these esteemed masters are Gilberto Granja and his son Óscar Granja Peña, both Pastuso.

Gilberto Granja has created a body of work that demonstrates his commitment and connection to the rich cultural heritage of Nariño, Colombia,

where the mopa mopa legacy flourishes.

Gilberto’s journey in the world of barniz de Pasto began at the age of 20 when he entered the workshop of master mopa mopa artist Rosa Mejía Torres (Pastuso).

Under her guidance, Gilberto honed his skills and deepened his understanding of the intricate techniques involved in the art form.

After three years of apprenticeship, Gilberto established his workshop where he has dedicated himself to practicing

above Gilberto Granja cutting pieces of a mopa mopa varnish for inlaying. Photo: Óscar Granja.

Image courtesy of Taller Granja. opposite Gilberto Granja drying a finished multicolored barniz de Pasto bowl. Photo: Pablo Andrés Villota @pablovillotaph. Image courtesy of Taller Granja.

6. “Traditional knowledge and techniques associated with Pasto Varnish mopa-mopa of Putumayo and Nariño,” UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, web.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 57

above Three barniz de Pasto boxes by Taller Granja. Photo: Óscar Granja. Image courtesy of Taller Granja. opposite. top High detail of duotone barniz de Pasto pieces

by Taller Granja with their hallmark. Photo: Óscar Granja. Image courtesy of Taller Granja. opposite. bottom Finished barniz de Pasto vase by Taller Granja.

Photo: Óscar Granja. Image courtesy of Taller Granja.

the craft for over five decades to perfect a technique so precisely that it could easily be mistaken for a computer-generated pattern. Inspired by the beauty of his homeland, Gilberto’s artwork serves as a declaration of his love for the land.7 Through his craftsmanship, Gilberto preserves the cultural heritage of mopa mopa and pays homage to the land that has nurtured and inspired him throughout his artistic journey.

Gilberto Granja’s contribution to the art of mopa mopa extends beyond his own creations. As one of the few remaining masters, he serves as a passionate mentor and inspiration to aspiring artists and future generations.

His dedication to the craft and his commitment to its preservation are essential in ensuring that the practice of mopa mopa continues to thrive.

Óscar Granja Peña proudly inherited his father’s knowledge and recognized the importance of preserving this delicate art form. He made a pivotal decision in 2009 to return to his hometown of Pasto, Colombia, after living elsewhere for 22 years, to join forces with him. Óscar has wholeheartedly committed himself to upholding his family’s legacy. Gradually he learned to create intricate designs such as borders, letters, and basic shapes, essential elements that craftsmen and craftswomen must master in this technique.

He also immersed himself in understanding perspective and planes, learning through observation, inquiry, and hands-on experience. He deeply appreciates the profound talent of his father and considers himself fortunate to reciprocate it by incorporating

7. Gilberto Granja, “Taller de Barniz de Pasto.” Granja: Barniz de Pasto, Nosotros page, web.

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marketing, communication, and negotiation skills into the family workshop. It is his way to repay for the years he spent away from his father’s side and to connect a new generation of collectors to the past while keeping their gaze firmly fixed on the future. The bridge between generations is a work in progress and serves as his greatest inspiration and driving force.

Together, Gilberto Granja, Óscar Granja Peña, and other artists like Eduardo Muñoz Lora, Daniel Obando, and Anthony Fierro represent the continuity and vitality of the mopa mopa art form. As they pass down their knowledge, skill, and passion to future generations, they are helping to ensure that mopa mopa art will continue to thrive. The magical characterization of the mopa mopa tree and its resin capture the transformative qualities, captivating visual effects, cultural significance, and longstanding craftsmanship that accompany this remarkable art form.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 59

60 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

COUNTERPUBLIC 2023 A Mound City Triennial

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

E

Anita Fields (Osage/Muscogee) and Nokosee Fields (Osage/ Muscogee/Cherokee), WayBack, 2023, 40 wooden platforms painted and embellished with ribbons and tile, sound. Anna Tsouhlarakis (Navajo/Mus cogee), The Native Guide Project, 2019–ongoing, billboard. In the background: Sugarloaf Mound, earthwork, 600–1300 CE. Photo: Chris Bauer. Image courtesy of Counterpublic.

STABLISHED NEAR THE CONFLUENCE of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, Cahokia was the largest metropolis in what would become the United States in the 11th century. Residents of the celestially aligned city built hundreds of mounds for different purposes. The population dispersed by the 13th century, and by the 19th century, settler-colonists had razed most of the mounds. Today Cahokia is a protected UNESCO World Heritage site with an active archaeological research program and visitor’s center.

Cahokia sits on the east side of the Mississippi River in Illinois, across from the city of St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis has many points of pride: a professional baseball team, exceptional botanical gardens, and free museums. It is also the hometown of Maya Angelou, Josephine Baker, and Miles Davis. Yet like any other geographic location, it also has a shameful past: it was the primary staging site for the Indian Wars; the setting for Dred Scott v. Sandford (the 1857 US Supreme Court case that upheld slavery in US territories); effects of intense redlining are still visible today. The Arch, completed in 1965, became an icon of a mythical “Gateway to the West” to mark the beginning and end point of Lewis and Clark’s exploration of occupied Indian land. Select events continue to be romanticized.

Many writers, artists, and scholars have dedicated their life’s work to balancing myopic and whitewashed histories to bring clarity and nuance to the present. A recurring, experimental, public exhibition in St. Louis delivers this careful research through accessible contemporary art.

Counterpublic is a site-specific triennial that illuminates concealed histories of St. Louis. The civic event grew out of successful achievements to promote underrepresented emerging artists. In 2007, writer and curator James McAnally and artist Brea Youngblood founded the Luminary, a gallery space with robust programming centered on social justice.

A decade later, McAnally established Counterpublic, which debuted in 2019.

The first iteration invited 34 artists to create interventions along Cherokee Street to bring contemporary art “to the barbershops, bakeries, parks, and taquerias” in the southside neighborhood. Emerging BIPOC artists drew parallels between local and national politics of identity, representation, and voice.

The second edition (delayed one year due to the pandemic) grew from conversations and collaborations with hundreds of participants. Poet and activist Cheeraz Gormon worked with McAnally to create a community report developed from a year-long listening project. The theme “public memory and reparative NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 61

“What does a Native Future look like?”

above X (Coushatta/CHamoru), (a river) will flow, 2023, analog projection and sound installation, billboard. Photo: A. Ferber.

62 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

futures” emerged from impromptu interactions at bus stops and engagement in existing community meetings. McAnally then assembled a curatorial team: Allison Glenn, Risa Puleo, Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Diya Vij, and New Red Order (NRO), who managed artist commissions.

Foundational to their endeavor is Walter Johnson’s book, The Broken Heart of America (2020), which details histories of removal and displacement of Native and Black populations in St. Louis.

Johnson’s case study provides insight into analogous painful and devastating histories that unfolded across the United States. The artists selected for this year’s Counterpublic call attention to absences as well as overt signs of colonialism naturalized through familiarity.

Small yellow signs installed throughout the city pose questions such

as “What does this land remember?” and “What does a Native Future look like?”

Collected by architect and Counterpublic community engagement strategist Melisa Sanders, these derive from conversations and listening sessions.

Interventions in every medium are spread out across 25 locations along six miles of Jefferson Avenue, a main artery named after one of the nation’s most prominent slaveholders and architects of Manifest Destiny. A few works are in museums and galleries, but most are woven into the fabric of the city on buses, billboards, and local businesses.

Four works are permanent, including an earthwork by renowned architect David Adjaye and a public sculpture

by Damon Davis.

Of the 24 artists and five collectives, eight are Indigenous: Raven

Chacon (Navajo), Anita Fields (Osage/Muscogee), Nokosee Fields (Osage/Muscogee/Cherokee), Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/ Hidatsa/Arikara/Lakota), New Red Order (Sault Ste. Marie Ojibway and Tlingit), Anna Tsouhlarakis (Navajo/ Muscogee), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish-Kootenai/Métis/ShoshoneBannock), and X (Coushatta/ CHamoru).

Three artists brought attention to what is now called Sugarloaf Mound.

This 40-foot-high earthwork sits on a bluff that overlooks the Mississippi River south of the city and is the oldest surviving, human-made structure in the region. Named in the 18th century because of its shape, the mound has never been excavated; however, three houses were built on it and some sections fell victim to a limestone quarry.1 In 2009 the Osage Nation purchased part of the mound, and subsequently one house was removed.

Currently this part of the mound is protected by a fence. No Trespassing signs display the seal of the Osage Nation. The artistic interventions orchestrated by Counterpublic—a billboard and outdoor installation— bring more widespread attention to ongoing efforts to rematriate the entire mound and surrounding lots for preservation and public interpretation.

A double-sided billboard features work by New Red Order and Anna Tsouhlarakis. NRO’s side reads, “Got land? Give it back! This

billboard is on sacred ground.” Text overlays images of landscape that also appear in NRO’s video short (described later). Tsouhlarakis’s south-facing billboard reads, WHEN YOU LISTEN THE LAND SPEAKS. This is the latest manifestation of The Native Guide Project, begun in 2019 as two billboards in Colorado Springs, and currently part of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona. Some of the artist’s positive affirmations can be viewed on the Instagram account @thatnativeartist.

While related to text-based conceptual work, Tsouhlarakis’s poignant phrases are much more pointed than those by Lawrence Weiner. Like Jenny Holzer, Tsouhlarakis appropriates text from many sources to address systems of oppression. Critically, Tsouhlarakis punctuates virtual and public spaces with a decidedly Indigenous voice.

An installation by Anita Fields and her son Nokosee Fields called WayBack fills a grassy space just south of Sugarloaf Mound. The Osage are among the descendants of the local Mississippian people. Anita Fields works mostly in ceramics and fiber art, often incorporating Osage script, and Nokosee is a master violinist and composer who often collaborates with other artists.

WayBack consists of 40 low wooden platforms arranged in a diamond shape. As explained by

above New Red Order (Sault Ste. Marie Ojibway and Tlingit), Give it Back: Stage Theory, 2023, digital art billboard, 576 × 186 in. Image courtesy of Counterpublic. below Three details of Anita Fields (Osage/Muscogee) and Nokosee Fields (Osage/Muscogee/Cherokee), WayBack, 2023, wooden platforms painted and embellished with ribbons and tile, sound. Photos: Chris Bauer.

Image courtesy of Counterpublic.

1. Jennifer Colten and Jesse Vogler, “Commingling, or the Mound Called Sugarloaf,” in Counterpublic 2023, ed. James McAnally (St. Louis, MO: Counterpublic, 2023), 73.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 63

curator Risa Puleo, “Their appearance in a landscape signals a threshold event, such as naming ceremonies, birthdays, weddings, sending soldiers to war, funerals, feasts, and other aspects of Osage cultural life.”2 The tops are painted in vibrant geometric patterns.

Nokosee’s sound component emanates from speakers underneath the platforms.

Chimes, birdsongs, a woman speaking Osage, and a man singing overlay string and woodwind instruments. At the close of the exhibition, the platforms will be distributed to Osage community members in Oklahoma.

C ounterpublic curators are mediating negotiations to reclaim the entire mound from a homeowner and the Kappa Psi pharmaceutical fraternity.

The land will belong to the Osage Nation.

If the late American artist Robert Smithson had been invited to contribute to Counterpublic, he might have selected the area north of Sugarloaf for a sitespecific earthwork. Arguably uglier than Passaic, New Jersey, it features a dump, oil

refineries, rail yards, and other industrial monuments. Here one can view works by Chicago-based artist X, including (a river) will flow, which returns the memory of water to this place. Perched atop a rocky cliff, a billboard shows an image of water.

After dusk, a waterfall appears to flow slowly over the cliff through the use of projectors. The sound of moving water reverberates in the cavern-like space with occasional phrases: the artist’s grandmother speaking in Koasati, a Muskogean language.

Not far from Sugarloaf Mound sits the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) in Forest Park, one of two locations of another installation by New Red Order (NRO). NRO describes itself as a “public secret society” with rotating members.

Led by brothers Adam and Zack Khalil (both Sault Ste. Marie Ojibway) and Jackson Polys (Tlingit), the group works in video, performance, and installation.

Give it Back: Stage Theory is a video set to thumping electronic music. A collage of images scrolls from right to left, evoking massive painted panoramas from the early

19th century that predated filmic “moving pictures.” Colonial paintings depict scenes from the 11th to the 19th centuries: stereotyped portrayals of precontact life, Spanish conquistadors arriving in boats with Catholic priests, cultivated Mississippian landscapes with earthworks, and excavation of mounds using slave labor.

The current St. Louis skyline with the Gateway Arch is layered over some scenes, and flashing text announces a manifesto for the return of land.

This work is screened in two locations, a gallery on Cherokee Street and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Viewing it at the latter becomes especially jarring when text declares: This is an action item requiring the [Saint] Louis Art Museum which is built on burial mounds razed to make way for the World’s Fair which displayed living Indigenous people including residential school children… [to] give it back.

Though land acknowledgments are becoming more common in the United

2. Risa Puleo, “Anita + Nokosee Fields,” in Counterpublic 2023, ed. James McAnally (St. Louis, MO: Counterpublic, 2023), 118.

64 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

States, NRO successfully implicates its audience. Viewers are made to feel profoundly uncomfortable. As stated in the label for this work, NRO “accelerates the disruption of settler colonialism.”

Two complementary works by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith hang in Monaco, an artist-run cooperative gallery next door to the Luminary and a couple miles almost directly north of Sugarloaf Mound.

State Names Map: Cahokia is the latest in this artist’s well-known series, which prompts viewers to question place names and state boundaries. The United States is centered across three canvases painted in shades of rose-pink, while Canada and Mexico are lime green. States along the Mississippi River are emphasized in a mosaic of yellow, orange, and blue.

Bison appear to migrate East while a few coyotes travel West. Despite there being very few federally recognized tribes in the southern part of this watershed, Smith fills the states with names of removed tribes: Omaha, Otoe, Kaw, Meskwaki, and more.

Trade Canoe: Osage Orange is a skeleton craft suspended from the ceiling in front of Smith’s map, made from Osage orange, or bois d’arc, wood.

White plastic casts of trade objects such as guns, mirrors, liquor bottles, and a beaver are piled in the canoe. Patches of dripped paint in electric green, sky blue, black, and pink relate it to the painting.

Many east–west streets in this neighborhood take their name from Indigenous nations (Osage, Chippewa) while several north–south streets are named for US states (Oregon, Wyoming).

Counterpublic curators are working with the city to place Erased History Markers at select intersections to call attention to complex histories: The crossing of Missouri Avenue and Osage Street indexes the history of nine treaties that heralded the forcible removal of the Osage people from their ancestral homelands between 1808 and 1865 in the process of establishing Missouri’s statehood. Similarly, the intersection of Cherokee Street and Tennessee Avenue references the Trail of Tears.3

In this way, Smith’s ambition to prompt audiences to question existing place names and reflect on new possibilities is extended into public space, comparable in some ways to Southern Cheyenne artist Edgar Heap of Birds’s ongoing Native Hosts project.

Cannupa Hanska Luger debuted Future Ancestral Technologies (FAT) in 2018. This ongoing project activates artist-made regalia through photography, video, installation, and augmented reality.

For Counterpublic, three vinyl banners on an exterior gallery wall show three of seven different midéegaadi (“buffalo” in Hidatsa) figures wearing elaborate mixed-media ensembles under the text WE SURVIVE

above Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish-Kootenai/Métis/ Shoshone-Bannock), background: State Names Map: Cahokia, 2023, mixed media on canvas, 72 × 144 in.; foreground: Trade Canoe: Osage Orange, 2023, bois d’arc wood, cast resin, mirror, 96 × 18 × 14 in.

Photo: A. Ferber. opposite Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/ Lakota), Future Ancestral Technologies: Roaming, 2023, photographic banners. Photo: A. Ferber.

3. Siddhartha Mitter, “Counterpublic in St. Louis Pushes the Public-Art Envelope,” The New York Times, May 9, 2023, web.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 65

Counterpublic’s collaborative, grassroots approach to developing this ambitious event models Indigenous ways of working.

above Raven Chacon (Navajo), Music for 13 Paths, 2021–23, installed in Benton Park, St. Louis, Missouri. Photo: Chris Bauer. Image courtesy of Counterpublic.

YOU. Viewers can scan QR codes to see the midéegaadi dance in particular St. Louis locations. Bone Bison dances on a cementlined area of the Mississippi riverfront next to a bronze statue of Lewis and Clark.

Through the artist’s Instagram account, one can also select a bison to record over any location, virtually repopulating lands where herds once grazed. Indigenous Futurisms as explored by Luger, Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti), and Skawennati (Mohawk), dovetail with Afrofuturist visions of oppression-free prospects. As explained by Puleo, “The world created is a ‘future dreaming’ … in which Indigenous peoples and cultures thrive.”4 Raven Chacon orchestrated Music for 13 Paths on a beautiful Saturday morning. Thirteen participants were each given a large steel wind chime and walked nearly a mile from the Luminary to Benton Park, a small hilly greenspace that attracts many ducks, geese, and dog walkers. The park was named in 1866 after Thomas Hart Benton, one 4. Risa Puleo, “Anita + Nokosee Fields,” 125.

66 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

of Missouri’s first senators and a leader in Indian Removal. Some art pilgrims walked and biked alongside the participants, who all took different routes. In the park everyone gathered on a hill where each chime was hung on a wire. The walk will be repeated again; in the interim, the chimes remain in the park to continue the performance on their own.

Counterpublic’s collaborative, grassroots approach to developing this ambitious event models Indigenous ways of working. Perhaps it will inspire other major recurring “iennials” to focus more on local histories and community engagement rather than celebrity artists and market trends.

Counterpublic ran from April 15 to July 15, 2023. A 300-page catalogue includes essays by six curators, the community report, an interview with author Walter Johnson, profiles on participating artists, and a curatorial roundtable discussion.

••• •••••• ••••••• • •• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ••••••• • ••••••• •••••• • • • • • • • • •• •• ••••• ••••••• • • • • • • • •••••••••••••••• •••••••• ••••••• ••••••••

NATIVE ARTISTS IN CONVERSATION NATIVE ARTISTS IN CONVERSATION

Amber DuBoise-Shepherd, pictured above, Amber DuBoise-Shepherd, pictured above, is featured on episode seven, Bridging Old Ways is featured on episode seven, Bridging Old Ways With A New View. She is a citzen of the Navajo Nation.

With A New View. She is a citzen of the Navajo Nation.

Amber’s artistic path has given her the ability to work Amber’s artistic path has given her the ability to work with old and new ideas to create a bridge for viewers with old and new ideas to create a bridge for viewers to see traditions differently in a visual way. She wants to see traditions differently in a visual way. She wants to invite the viewer to be a part of her world and see to invite the viewer to be a part of her world and see the traditions the way she sees them in her everyday life. the traditions the way she sees them in her everyday life.

Amber wants her artwork to reach out and connect with Amber wants her artwork to reach out and connect with others; to let them know we may be different, but to others; to let them know we may be different, but to know we are all human beings. Her hope is that her artknow we are all human beings. Her hope is that her artwork will give the viewer a perspective of what it looks work will give the viewer a perspective of what it looks like to be a Native in America and in Oklahoma today. like to be a Native in America and in Oklahoma today.

Amber’s pieces are mixed media and oil paintings and Amber’s pieces are mixed media and oil paintings and have an illustrative and narrative quality. With them, she have an illustrative and narrative quality. With them, she bridges traditional Native American subjects with more bridges traditional Native American subjects with more modern contemporary styles. modern contemporary styles.

She has an Associate of Arts degree from Seminole State She has an Associate of Arts degree from Seminole State College in Florida, and completed her Bachelor of Fine College in Florida, and completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Spring of 2016 at Oklahoma State University.

Arts in Spring of 2016 at Oklahoma State University.

DuBoise-Shepherd has been the Manager of Education DuBoise-Shepherd has been the Manager of Education and Outreach at the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art in and Outreach at the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art in Shawnee, Oklahoma since April 2019.

Shawnee, Oklahoma since April 2019.

AA Podcast About the Native Podcast About the Native American Art World and itsits Artists.

American Art World and Artists.

Cray Bauxmont-Flynn Cray Bauxmont-Flynn

is the host of BEYOND THE ART. In each episode is the host of BEYOND THE ART. In each episode he speaks to artworld leaders, influencers, and he speaks to artworld leaders, influencers, and change-makers in the Native American arts— change-makers in the Native American arts— from artists to museum directors and everyone from artists to museum directors and everyone in between. Tune-in to LEARN! in between. Tune-in to LEARN! Cray Bauxmont-Flynn (Cherokee/Delaware) was raised Cray Bauxmont-Flynn (Cherokee/Delaware) was raised in Newport Beach, California; educated in Paris and Rome in Newport Beach, California; educated in Paris and Rome earning a Masters Degree in Art and Interior Design; earning a Masters Degree in Art and Interior Design; worked in Singapore, New York City, Los Angeles and worked in Singapore, New York City, Los Angeles and Las Vegas; all before landing in Tulsa in 2019 as Creative Las Vegas; all before landing in Tulsa in 2019 as Creative Principal and Founder of Amatoya, a full service design Principal and Founder of Amatoya, a full service design studio and made-to-order furniture collection. studio and made-to-order furniture collection.

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Karin Walkingstick (Cherokee Nation), Abundance of the People, hand-coiled ceramic jar, 17 × 15 × 15 in.

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PROFILE

70 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

AVIS CHARLEY

Spirit Lake Dakota/Diné Painter & Ledger Artist

AVIS CHARLEY

By Paul Niemi

A

VIS CHARLEY FOUND SUCCESS in the Native American art world later in life. While generational Native artists were learning pottery, beadwork, silversmithing, and painting elsewhere, Charley was living a busy urban life, building community, and finding connection and inspiration on the streets of East Long Beach, California.

Far from her mother’s birthplace, the Spirit Lake Dakota Reservation in North Dakota, Charley began cultivating an art career on her own terms, armed with passion and a spray paint can in her hand.

A Native woman sits on a bus stop bench. She wears a ribbon skirt, beaded earrings, sunglasses, suede ankle boots, and a denim jacket. She’s cosmopolitan, hip, and exudes cool as she sits and observes whatever it is she sees. Her destination doesn’t seem to matter as long as connection is made along the way. Maybe the journey is simply to remain seated, firm in her being, telling her story through her body language and fashion. In actuality, she is the subject of Charley’s figurative oil painting Think Long, Think Wrong (2021). It hangs at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) and alludes to the 1977 T.C. Cannon (Kiowa/Caddo, 1946–1978) lithograph, Waiting for the Bus (Anadarko Princess), which also depicts a postmodern Native American woman. Charley drew inspiration from Cannon’s work to shed light on her “belief in the power of setting aside distractions and staying in the present moment.”1 Upon meeting the artist, it’s immediately clear that she is emotionally strong, confident, and proud of her Indigenous and Angeleno identity and her Indigenous heritage. It’s not uncommon for artists to follow a nonlinear career path filled with setbacks. To listen to Charley tell her story, it seems that she has found a way to remain calm, cool, and disciplined, always boldly staying the course while thwarting the detrimental distractions that can hinder success. No doubt the ability to laugh at and embrace life’s challenges has been instrumental in bringing her to where she is today.

“I have the type of sense of humor where I make myself laugh in conversation,” Charley muses. Besides funny, intentional might also describe her. Her artistic progression seems to be the result of setting her sights on a goal and working hard to achieve it. This strategy has paid off for the creative triple-threat. In a field where artists compete against each other for top honors at art markets, Charley says that she never worries about the critics and remains fully focused on the work. “You don’t listen to the praise,” she says. It makes it “easier to ignore the negative.”

Charley prefers to let her art speak for itself.

above Avis Charley, 2023. Photo: Edyta Sokolowska. All images courtesy of the artist. opposite Think Long, Think Wrong, 2021, oil on canvas, 40 × 30 × 1½ in., collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2021.80, gift of Funds From Mary and Bob Mersky.

THE SEED IS PLANTED HER UNIQUE ARTISTIC VOICE made itself known unexpectedly when she was a young teen. Growing up in a big city, school field trips took Charley and her classmates to the opera and art museums, but she never even knew that a career in art existed. Raised in a low-income, single-parent household in Los Angeles County, Charley got involved with making street art in and around Long Beach at age 13 and quickly earned acceptance into a graffiti crew. The highly organized group of teens composed of kids from similar backgrounds became a tightknit family that protected its members. Charley calls them her

1. “Think Long, Think Wrong, 2021,” Minneapolis Institute of Art, web.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 71

PROFILE

“first community.” The group nurtured an environment of belonging and gave Charley the tag name P.O.E.T., short for Putting Out Every Toy (in local street slang, a toy is someone who can’t write or draw). Inexperienced but motivated, Charley found creative inspiration and honed her skills. Access to empty alley walls plus practice runs armed with cans of spray paint helped ignite her artistic fire. It laid the foundation for her career as an artist, even if she did not know it at the time. When Charley held a can in her hand, she sensed a creative force working through her. “I felt like I was releasing [this force], and at the same time I was filling myself up.” Making art was an urge she felt compelled to satisfy.

Avis Charley’s family circumstances reinforced what she describes as a feeling of invisibility. Her ability to toggle between multiple styles using varied materials as a tagger, however, steadily helped her build a following in her community. Her tags were frequently spotted on city walls and buses, and strangers from her peer group began to approach her with positive feedback. Charley relished the validation. “For the first time in my life, that made me feel seen.” The recognition allowed her to join the nowfamous Homeland Cultural Center in Long Beach in 1991, founded in 1989 by California artist and activist Dixie Swift.

Just blocks from Avis Charley’s home, the center provided spray paint cans to participants and walls to practice on. Charley also received her first sketchbook and was introduced to pastels and other materials 72 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

that allowed her to further experiment with art. She credits working at the center with saving her life during a difficult time.

Things for Charley took a sudden turn when she became the teenage mom of a little boy. Her focus shifted away from art to parenting, at least for a period.

LEARNING & LEDGER ART LEDGER ART depicted life events and evolved from hide painting and pictograms. Through contact with settlers, Western tribes adopted the use of accounting ledger paper as backdrops for their colored pencil-and-ink drawings after buffalo hides were more difficult to acquire due to the systematic destruction of bison herds. Some artists came by the paper while they were prisoners of war.

The genre has seen a resurgence since the 1970s and again in the 2010s, and today’s artists such as Terrance Guardipee (Blackfeet) and a host of others have reenvisioned ledger art.

Charley first met Terrance Guardipee and his wife, Catherine Black Horse (Seminole Nation), in 2009. She hosted the couple at her home for the American Indian Arts Marketplace at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. This was Charley’s introduction to the acclaimed Native American market.

Unfamiliar with ledger art, Charley’s interest was sparked as she got to know Guardipee and his work. Guardipee

had explained to her that the Dakota people also had a history of making ledger art. He suggested she further examine her roots through the lens of historic ledger art and gave her a stack of ledger paper to experiment with. In Long Beach, Charley attended tribal events and powwows, but her reality was far removed from “rez life.” This pushed the artist to strive for authenticity in her work. She jumped full force into making ledger art and researched its history and historical players. She visited and talked with elders from her reservation about her ancestors as well as pre- and post-reservation period Dakota adornment. A great deal of ledger art depicts imprisonment of Native people. To learn about the atrocities her ancestors faced and how they expressed their anguish in historic ledger art was very painful for Charley. The antique paper, the stylized images, and the stories the artists told are what drew her most to the work, but “knowing that they were in prison creating this art … it hurt my heart,” she said.

Her quest for knowledge also revealed that a majority of ledger art was very masculine. Many drawings featured buffalo hunts and bloody battle scenes.

She found them very unrelatable and wanted to tell a different story in her art.

“I tend to make things I don’t see” in most ledger art, she says. She wanted to bring a feminine perspective to her work, which could partially explain why the majority of her collectors today are women.

The tragic death of Charley’s mother in 1998, when the artist was just 22, was a massive blow. She never fully processed her grief, so when she began to make ledger art, her pieces explored mother-and-daughter motifs. Over time, creating ledger art became a healing mechanism for her.

Avis Charley entered the Native American art scene around 2011 when many ledger artists, including other women, were making names for themselves in top galleries and Native American art markets. Seasoned collectors were buying from Guardipee, Darryl Growing Thunder (Fort Peck Dakota/Nakoda), Dolores Purdy (Caddo/ Winnebago), Dwayne Wilcox (Oglala Lakota), Sheridan MacKnight (White Earth Ojibwe/Standing Rock Lakota),

AVIS CHARLEY

Chris Pappan (Osage/Kaw/Cheyenne River Lakota), and others. As a newcomer, Charley had something to prove and worked extremely hard to learn and grow. She was helping to evolve ledger art, but it would not be apparent until much later. “I didn’t know that I was bringing a woman’s perspective into this male-dominated art form.”

The female point of view is evident in works such as Protectors (2021). The piece depicts three Dakota women dressed in regalia. The composition is unusual, and the women express the same strength and pride as the women in Charley’s figurative works. One needs only glance at her faceless ledger subjects to recognize the artist in her work.

One of her most noteworthy pieces of ledger art, and a sentimental one for Charley, is the serigraph Another Relocation Story (2018), which features a Los Angeles RTD bus, a recurring motif in her work. “It’s my creation story and how I came to be,” she says. For the artist, the bus represents her upbringing in Long Beach. Her mother first met her father after she saw him walking down the street in downtown Los Angeles as she rode by on a bus. Charley and her mother would also make frequent bus trips when they didn’t have a car. “I have many fond memories of my mom and talking her ear off as we waited for our next bus,” she recalls.2

A FIGURATIVE PAINTER BLOSSOMS AVIS CHARLEY’S POPULARITY as a ledger artist grew over the next several years, but all the while she thirsted to learn more about Native American art.

Inspired by her uncle Fred Charley (Diné) and Terrance Guardipee, both alumni of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), Charley attended the prestigious art school and earned a BFA degree.

The experience was eye-opening, and living in Santa Fe around so much art mesmerized her. At IAIA she honed her skills and had the opportunity to learn printmaking, ceramics, and jewelry. The program also provided a foundation in art history and allowed her to explore artistic possibilities. Indigenous studies

opened her eyes to activism, and she was able to ask herself the question, What do I care about? While it was important to grieve her mother’s passing, Charley was ready to move on and use her art as a tool

2. Avis Charley, “Another Relocation Story,” Avis Charley Art, Facebook, July 7, 2020, web.

above Power, 2022, color pencil on antique ledger paper, 18½ × 10¾ in., private collection. opposite Another Relocation Story, 2018, serigraph with color pencil on antique ledger paper, 8½ × 12¼ in., private collection.

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She asks the question, What about today’s women?

above Reciprocity, 2020, color pencil on antique ledger paper, 15¾ × 14 in., private collection. opposite Breathe, 2020, oil on canvas, 40 × 30 in., private collection.

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to express something new and equally meaningful.

Charley found yet another community at IAIA. She, along with other students, headed to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota for the NoDAPL protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Indigenous people from all over descended on the site in support of land and water protection and the preservation of sacred sites. The experience changed her life forever, and activism found its way into her artwork.

Charley says that she has finally found peace after her mother’s death and has healed from the pain she experienced learning about the plight and history of her ancestors. Her focus has shifted to contemporary Native women in her art.

When she creates and looks within herself,

she asks the question, What about today’s women? Her figurative paintings almost exclusively feature Native American women in 21st-century settings.

Charley laments that as a child, romanticized, sexualized images of Native women were her only exposure to Native people in popular culture.

With these memories in the recesses of her mind, Charley sees an opportunity to set an example for generations to come by creating work that speaks of indigeneity and the current female perspective, with undertones of activism, something she is very passionate about. Her work is helping to change the narrative and raise the bar for Native people. Avis Charley hopes that by creating work that she wished she’d seen growing up, it will inspire other talented youth to follow in her footsteps one day.

More than a decade has passed since she first participated in SWAIA’s Santa Fe Indian Market, which now feels like home for Charley. She is excited about participating in the 101st edition of the market this year, an event that allows artists to meet collectors face-to-face, get to know them, and build lifelong friendships. Charley contends that when you purchase Native American art, “You are purchasing a part of the artist’s energy as well. When I collect or trade with other Native artists,” she says, “their personality or energy is what I’m really drawn to.” Longevity in the art world can often be contingent upon museum interest in an artist’s work. Charley is grateful that Indian Market allows for exposure and the opportunity to meet collectors and connect with museum professionals.

Besides regularly participating in SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market, Avis Charley also attends the Heard Museum Guild’s Indian Fair and Market and has shown at the International Folk Art Market (IFAM). Since graduating from the Institute of American Indian Art, her work has garnered many accolades, including Best of Show at the 2020 Eiteljorg Indian Market and Festival.

She completed residencies at Self Help Graphics in Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles and at her alma mater IAIA. She also guest lectured online at the University of Washington in Seattle and

AVIS CHARLEY

the Eiteljorg Museum in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The search for community and making connections through storytelling is what drives Avis Charley to make art.

Her appeal as an artist is undeniable. It’s evidenced by her popularity on the Native American art market circuit, with the collectors who commission her work as well as the museums that have her pieces in their collections. Her passion for experimentation and the humility that pushes her to grow in new ways is apparent in everything she does. Her extraordinary technical prowess as a painter is a testament to her raw talent, her ability to filter out life’s distractions, and her strong work ethic. She has made remarkable strides since 2009. Her color, composition, and ability to capture mood are impeccable. Her settings, full of bold blues and accent colors, arouse tentative emotion and curiosity about her subjects in the mind of the spectator. Her work is theatrical as her characters reveal their story on the canvas. The viewer may ask, Who are they? Where are they? What do they really want? With every stroke, Charley makes clear that she is just as curious about the women in her paintings as admirers of her work are. The question also arises, Is the viewer looking at the artist herself?

Avis Charley has come a long way from painting murals in the alleyways of Long Beach’s Eastside, but she never forgets where she came from. Creating in three different media fulfills her dream of supporting herself as a full-time artist.

She considers Think Long, Think Wrong one of her biggest artistic triumphs because it challenged her to balance all the variations of blues found in the skirt, jacket, and sky. “Crisp and modern,” as she describes it, the painting is also Charley’s favorite piece in a large, diverse body of work. She hopes that for years to come that it, along with her other figurative paintings, will serve as research material for Native artists and scholars alike to learn about Native American life today.

So what is Charley up to now? After the 2022 Santa Fe Indian Market, she and her 14-year-old daughter moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, to be closer to family.

While the move is temporary until she returns to Los Angeles in 2024, Charley has delved into the growing Las Vegas art

scene and continues to paint figurative pieces, create ledger art, and make dentalium jewelry that mostly attracts Native collectors who have a cultural connection to it. She quickly found a studio space and a new artistic community at NuWu Art Gallery and Community Center, founded by multidisciplinary artist Fawn Douglas (Las Vegas Paiute), and her partner, Dr. A.B. Wilkinson. The collective, right off the Vegas strip, is home to a group of artists who use their creativity to decolonize.

Charley continues to advance as an artist. Currently she is illustrating a children’s book about buffalo and is hard

at work on a portrait that honors the courage of two-spirit youth.

This August she returns to IAIA to begin her MFA studies. Moving forward, Charley plans to create a body of work that is stylistically reminiscent of World War II–era propaganda with an inspirational twist. She can be found at the 2023 SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market at booth 738 LIN-WEST. As she continues her quest for connection through storytelling, Charley ponders how her art will impact Native America moving forward.

“I imagine future generations dissecting the details in this work the way I [dissect] black-and-white photos of my ancestors.”

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PROFILE

Hopi Textile Artist & Painter

AHKIMA HONYUMPTEWA

By Jill Ahlberg Yohe, PhD Ahkima is a prolific weaver of customary Hopi textiles and maintains a steady stream of commissions. His works of art are as much at home in a Native fashion show, in ceremony, or on display in art museums. His textiles can be found in public and private collections throughout the country and in Japan, where Ahkima has established enduring relationships with Japanese institutional partners. Ahkima has been traveling to Japan over the last decade and is an unofficial cultural ambassador, sharing Hopi art and life with the public.

Before becoming a weaver, Ahkima’s art was mostly painting and drawing, which he continues to do to this day.

His works on canvas convey scenes of ceremonial life with highly detailed dancing Katsinam. These beings, with deep active presence and motion, leap off the canvas and provide the viewer a glimpse into the life-affirming, generative power of time-honored Hopi dances.

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EAVER, PAINTER, EDUCATOR, AND FARMER, Ahkima Honyumptewa of the Snake clan of the Paaqavi community in Third Mesa, Arizona, is an artist to follow. He won Best of Classification in textiles in 2022 at the Santa Fe Indian Market with Oryavi Kenel Kwasa, his remarkable Hopi manta, or woman’s dress, a buttery cream-colored, exceptional twill weaving. Ahkima’s work is admired by many—and perhaps most importantly, by other great textile artists—for his elegant, technically masterful work.

After the bustle of activity at the 65th Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market this past spring, Ahkima generously shared his time over the phone. We discussed a range of topics around art, including his approach to farming in a customary Hopi manner.

Ahkima's field crops are ever-present in his life, so we scheduled our conversation around tending to his newly planted corn, soon to emerge from the earth. In the Hopi way and as he describes below, the sprouts are newborn children to shower with love and attention.

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JAY: What do you love to paint, and what do you want the people to see in your paintings?

AH: Mostly traditional Hopi paintings like Kachinas. During the time I started painting them, I was heavily involved in ceremony. I was involved every single year, every time during those days. And because we do a lot of arts and crafts in ceremony, that’s what kind of got me started.

The reason why I do Kachina scenes is [because] a lot of the people around, not just here in the Southwest but around the world, haven’t seen Hopi ceremonies or don’t have a chance to come out here to witness them. And so I paint what I see. I paint the scenes that the uninitiated kids can see. And so if they can see the ceremony, then everybody can see it, which means we can paint it. We can’t take photographs, but we can paint it from memory. And that’s what I want the people to see—is what we see out here in Hopi. The exact or actual scenes that we do. Almost like a photograph, but it’s not.

JAY: You capture a lot of life in your paintings; a lot of movement, and I see power, I see soul. I see a force within your paintings when I look at them.

AH: And that’s exactly what we see—when you see the ceremonies for yourself. It’s the same exact thing except without the sounds. Once you add the sounds in and the actual movements, then it’s even more power. And that’s the purpose for Hopi ceremonies: it is to bring the energies out of people, not just the Hopis, but the tourists who come out to see the ceremonies.

AHKIMA HONYUMPTEWA

It lifts that energy and brings that inner energy out. And that’s what helps go into the prayers to the clouds. So it’s not just us contributing, but it’s everybody who's watching who contributes to the rain and the clouds and the growth of corn and everything that we do. Everybody’s involved.

Honyumptewa encourages us to feel invited into Hopi spaces through his approach to painting, a unique style that uses the nearness of the figures dancing in contrast to a more standard, bird’s-eye view seen in early 20th-century Pueblo paintings. In Sounds of the Universe, large and finely detailed Katsinam draw the viewer into their world, a welcoming engagement. The slight tilt of the figures’ heads provides a sense of movement and personality. Ahkima pays close attention to depicting the Katsinam’s regalia: woven kilts and belts, hide moccasins, and additional adornments of feathers and pine branches. A head Katsinam appears in the distance next to the warm blue sky filled with rain clouds, an auspicious sign indicating the power of the dance to bring rain to the community.

Growing up in the Phoenix area, Ahkima immersed himself in sports throughout high school. After he graduated, he decided to move back home to Paaqavi and became highly active in ceremonial life and cultural practices.

There his weaving career began when his uncle recruited him to participate in a weaving class in Hotevilla. Encouraged by his family, Ahkima started weaving Hopi kilts. The process came quickly and naturally, and he was able to create double the quantity of his classmates, producing four kilts in just one month.

AH: My teacher was really impressed, and he was one of the guys at Hotevilla.

And it’s because of him, that got me going. He invited me to go to their kiva at Hotevilla … in 2008. A lot of those older guys were still around yet, and so I got to meet them. Hearing what they had to say about the weaving and their grandpas—they always kept saying that

they wish they would’ve learned. But they didn’t pay attention, so they don’t know how to do it. And so just hearing their stories motivated me to keep going.

Plus friends and family kept saying, just keep going, keep going.

Within a year, Ahkima learned Hopi belt weaving through a one-on-one apprenticeship with his uncle. After becoming grounded in weaving fundamentals, he then explored on his own. He taught himself other Hopi textile weaving forms and learned through visually examining other Hopi textiles. Within a few years, he mastered all forms of Hopi weavings.

Honyumptewa encourages us to feel invited into Hopi spaces through his approach to painting.

above Sounds of the Universe, 2021, oil on canvas, 40 × 30 in.

Image courtesy of the artist. opposite Ahkima Honyumptewa.

Photo: Dr. Colin. Image courtesy of the artist.

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His artwork exemplifies the understated beauty, grace, and deceptively complex Hopi weaving styles and techniques.

above Masupmenkwewa, 2023, woven men’s shirt, wool, cotton, 25 × 45 in. Photo: Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff. opposite Oryavi Kenel Kwasa, 2022, wool, diagonal weave with “hills and valleys” with diamond twill borders, 46½ × 43 in. Photo: Tira Howard/SWAIA. Image courtesy of SWAIA.

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Honyumptewa’s tightly woven dresses, blankets, mantas, kilts, and belts are expertly made, and he is one of the few Hopi weavers who continue to practice these art forms. He exhibits at Native art markets throughout the Southwest with accessible prices. His artwork exemplifies the understated beauty, grace, and deceptively complex Hopi weaving styles and techniques, often overlooked by textile and Native art enthusiasts.

Ahkima embodies generosity in his art and in his life. He now teaches others many Hopi textile weaving techniques and provides affordable Hopi dresses, kilts, blankets, and sashes for ceremonial wear within the community. This generosity extends beyond the community as well.

He has shared his knowledge around the world, in Mexico, Germany, England, France, and many, many times in Japan.

JAY: Could you share with readers your connection to Japan?

AH: Back in 2011 I was doing a show, and they were having a collaboration of Hopi and Zuni artists with Japanese artists from different provinces. A Japanese man I knew wanted somebody who was a non-jewelry artist to come. I do weavings and paintings, and so they asked me. So I went. One of the employees, Ito, at that time [was at] the Museum of Ethnology, [known as] Minpaku, in Osaka. We ended up being good friends. When he would come out here to Hopi, he would come over to my house and we would talk, visit.

In 2018 I went back again. I was doing a lecture at the Yokohama National University, and Ito wanted to buy two of every kind of Hopi textile. Because of him, who I met back in 2011, I got connected to that museum. They’re going to display them this year, and I’m going back again in November to help set up the displays. I also know gallery owners because a lot of the gallery owners from that first show were sponsoring this work.

AHKIMA HONYUMPTEWA

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Ahkima also considers farming an art form, another aesthetic practice he’s been doing for nearly 20 years.

above, top Atö'ö, 2016, woven blanket, wool, cotton, 42 × 50 in. Photo: Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff. above, bottom Cornfield, Paaqavi, Third Mesa, Hopi Reservation. Cultivated and photographed

by Ahkima Honyumptewa (Hopi).

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JAY: What do you grow? If you could describe it from your mind’s eye, or if you’re looking at it right now, what does it look like?

AH: Well right now, I just came from there this morning, and I’ve been planting blue corn all week. And my uncles, my grandparents, all of them, they taught me what the old ones did because I come from a farming family, and they wanted me to know. I’m the only one out here who lives here who goes down there and plants.

The old ones would say that when you farm and plant food or seeds, it’s like a teaching for parenting, to help become a good parent. Because when you start to plant, once you put them in the ground … they’re like your kids and you have to take care of them and maintain them. And so when they’re very little, when they start coming out, they’re like infants. When you have an infant child,

AHKIMA HONYUMPTEWA

you have to be there 24/7. You can’t keep your eyes off.

You always have to be around watching, and you’ve got to let the plants know that you’re there, even if you got to put your hands in there.

And then the corn plants start tasseling, and then they will start having corns. So it’s like them having babies too. You have to stay connected. Just as long as the plants know you’re there, you got to talk to them, feel around.

That’s what the old ones tell us.

JAY: Where do you sell your harvest? Or do you just give it to your family and survive with it?

AH: Well, I keep it because we use it for ceremonies. We use the white corn for stew when we have dances or ceremonies. Then the blue corn is for weddings or to make piki or just different kinds of foods. And then the red corn—they call it the parched corn. It’s like a baked corn, almost like corn nuts. And then of course the yellow corn is the sweet corn.

PULSE Weavings Weavings and and Paintings Paintings by

by Marlowe Marlowe Katoney Katoney

JAY: Do you make connections between your farming and your art?

AH: Not really. I mean, farming is an art in itself. I always tell people to clean your field, make it look nice, make it look like a garden, and fix it up. Then the plants see that; the plants feel that. So that helps encourage the plants to grow when you clean your field and make it look nice. But the purpose of Hopi ceremonies, especially the Snake Dance, the Home Dance—all of those ceremonies are not supposed to be used for personal use.

The reason for those ceremonies is for the growth of corn. If you do the ceremonies right, the corn will grow big and strong. If it’s not done right, then the corn grows in different sizes, and the plants are in different sizes when they should all be the same. And the purpose of a lot of Hopi ceremonies is for the growth of corn and different foods. And we know, of course, it’s for the weather, but the main purpose is for growing corn.

Whether farming, painting, weaving, or sharing knowledge with others, Ahkima invites everyone into his aesthetic processes and life through documentation on social media platforms. You want to learn more about farming? Type in Ahkima’s name on YouTube and watch ten videos of how to plant corn, place it into the earth, take care of it, and harvest.

Want to learn about his latest creation of a painting or a Hopi weaving? Follow Ahkima’s Instagram and see images of his paintings, weavings, travels, and growing crops. He'll also have booth PAL 275 at the Santa Fe Indian Market.

Like his farming style, Ahkima wants you to know that the process is as important as the finished piece itself, and he wants this to be available for all to see and learn from.

Marlowe MarloweKatoney, Katoney,Tucson-Memento Tucson-Memento(Axis (AxisRadius Radius#4 #4), ),2019 2019 Wool, Wool,aniline anilinedyes, dyes,vegetal vegetaldyes dyes Collection CollectionofofRoger Rogerand andCaroline CarolineFord Ford

October October 14, 14, 2023 2023 -March March 23, 23, 2024 2024

@SERPENT_FIREGOD_AHKIMA

artmuseum.arizona.edu artmuseum.arizona.edu NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 81

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Taos/Ohkay Owingeh Glass Artist

IRA LUJAN

By Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD

W

HILE IRA LUJAN was learning glasswork, he had a realization. Like ceramics, glass art takes an earthly material, whether it is clay or sand, and transforms it from a fluid to a solid through the application of high heat.

As someone with ties to the Pueblos in New Mexico, where pottery and ceramic arts have both a long history and a robust contemporary practice, Ira envisioned ways for glass to recreate and celebrate Southwestern art forms, especially decorated pottery. He has spent the past decades exploring the range of techniques and designs available with glass. These include glassblowing, working with flat glass, casting glass, and molding glass. He applies these skills to create new visions of iconic ceramics from New Mexico as well as exploring his own creative designs.

Raised in Albuquerque, Ira is a citizen of Taos Pueblo and a descendant of Ohkay Owingeh. His father, Dr. Ronald Lujan from Taos Pueblo, was the first Taos surgeon and traveled across the state, especially around Laguna Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo, and the Cañoncito area to treat patients. At the time, the Laguna hospital had a few surgical rooms with maybe 30 beds. Patients often gave him pottery in thanks for treatment. As a result, Ira was raised in a house with pottery from across the state, familiarizing him with the shapes and designs on the ceramics.

Ira often incorporates images found on the pots in his family’s collection, such as feathers, parrots, quail, rain, clouds, and other elements in his glasswork, as well as the distinct shapes found in Southwestern ceramics, including wedding vases, bowls, pots, and mugs. Ira’s father took his family to Taos over the summers where they would work on their ranch, which 82 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

connected the artist to his extended family.

Ira attended the Art Center Design College in Albuquerque to study graphic art, design, and marketing before attending the University of New Mexico (UNM), Taos, where he studied art. On a trip to Oregon, Ira visited the Eugene Glass School where he saw glassblowing for the first time. Immediately, he was drawn to the transformative nature of the materials. Watching the artists work the viscous molten glass into beautiful forms of vibrant colors inspired Ira to think of new ways to innovate utilitarian forms.

"The fourth dimension of glass is light.”

above Ira Lujan at work. All images courtesy of the artist and Gallery Hózhó. opposite Povi Wedding Vase, 2022, handblown glass, 15 × 8 in. diameter.

IRA LUJAN

When Ira returned to UNM, Taos, he began studying glasswork with Tony Jojola (Isleta Pueblo, 1958–2002). Tony suggested that Ira incorporate Native designs in his work. This has become one of the artist’s hallmarks found on works like his Parrot Jar from 2022 adorned with birds and flower designs sandblasted on the surface. The shape of the rounded jar with a narrow neck reflects the historic forms found in Pueblo ceramic ollas, especially from the Chaco sites. Executed in a clear green color with a subtle ombre effect, this jar demonstrates the artist’s skill in reenvisioning older designs.

In addition to his studies with Jojola at UNM, Taos, Ira traveled for more training. He attended summer programs in 2003 and 2005 at the Espace VERRE glass program in Montreal, Quebec. In 2006 Ira moved to Santa Fe, where he worked with glass artists Alex Abajian and Elodie Holmes, the owner of Liquid Light Glass. A Southwestern Association for Indian Arts fellowship in 2007 allowed Ira to build a portable hot shop so he could demonstrate glassblowing in different locations.

In 2006, Ira first attended the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington, a school founded by the glass artist Dale Chihuly. Pilchuck invites many artists to serve as instructors, teaching different techniques and materials including Italian glass artists from the Venetian island of Murano, known for centuries for their high-quality glasswork. Ira studied with Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary in 2007 and 2009. Singletary’s long career of creating Indigenous designs in glass inspired Ira to look to his own background. At Pilchuck, Ira learned to work larger and grander and to combine different pieces for a “Chihuly Chandelier.”

Ira observes, “Chihuly once said that once you put the light inside the piece it becomes a light fixture. Without it, it is a sculpture with a different life. You can see the shadows and the shapes. The fourth dimension of glass is light.”

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above Green Parrot Bowl, 2022, handblown glass, 11 × 9 in. opposite Taos Water Carrier, 2017, handblown, hot-sculpted glass with sand-carved designs, 24 × 6 in.

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Annual retreats at Pilchuck offer Ira opportunities to work in a quiet environment with fewer distractions. “I used to go there with an idea about what I would want to create, but once I arrived it would change because you are around all those people.” In May 2021 Ira attended The Gathering, a special Pilchuck retreat just for Indigenous artists, which brought

together Preston Singletary, Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Erica Lord (Athabascan/ Iñupiaq), and others.

Working with Robert “Spooner” Marcus (Ohkay Owingeh), Ira became known for his hand-pulled glass antlers.

The two were inspired to make glass antlers after seeing the work of the English founder of the Arts and Crafts movement

IRA LUJAN

William Morris, who in the mid-19th century created large antlers in glass. Working together, Spooner and Ira experimented with different techniques to recreate the distinctive shape. In his antlers, Ira starts with a piece of heated clear glass and then adds a “frit,” which the Collins Dictionary defines as “the partly fused mixture of sand and fluxes of which glass is made.” The frits come in different sizes, from fine powder to large chunks. Once the frit is in the hot glass, it warms and liquefies so it can be stretched. Ira pulls and folds the mixed glass over three or more times to create visible layers. For the distinctive ends, he handpresses them so the shape accurately reflects an antler. The antlers can be displayed in pairs or, as seen in his hanging mobile at Hotel Chaco, hung together as an installation.

Inspired by Ancestral Pueblo ceramic canteens, many of which were found at Chaco sites, Ira creates smaller versions of the shape. Like the historic examples, Ira’s glass canteens include loops for a leather strap allowing the canteen to be hung on a hook. While the Chaco Canyon examples have painted designs across their bellies, his glass pieces are blown with multiple colors mixed together to make abstract patterns. Ira uses colored glass as paint to create designs on the surface. He heats stringers of glass, pulls these into long threads, then applies them to the vessel’s surface, as seen on some of his canteens.

In Ira’s constant evolution and experimentation of practice, he incorporates new materials and attempts new techniques. Recently, he has been inspired to create matteblack-on-polished-black glassware, like those ceramics from San Ildefonso and Santa Clara Pueblos. These pieces reflect the rounded shapes of the pottery from the area. Ira sandblasts abstract cloud forms across the surfaces. When made from glass, this style, which was made famous by Maria Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo, ca. 1887–1980) and Julian Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo, ca. 1882–1943), allows Ira to focus on shape and design. He adds embellishment from the historic pots, especially with the Avanyu design. The figure of a water serpent, usually depicted with its body undulating around the vessel, serves as a reminder of the importance of water in the Southwest.

Using a technique involving addition and subtraction, Ira can create additional designs, such as his Povi Wedding Vase. He made this vase by handblowing white glass into the distinctive double-spout shape and then applying an additional layer of purple glass. Ira cut a floral design out of buttercut, which is a vinyl and polyethylene sheet that resists heat, applied it to the surface, then sandblasted the surface to remove the purple layer where the buttercut doesn’t cover the surface. The process of layering more material then removing some allows the artist to form pictorial designs.

Despite the challenges inherent in sculpting with glass, Ira has been able to create animals and skulls, often with horns.

Inspired by the many cow and goat skulls with horns displayed and sold around New Mexico, Ira’s skulls combine matte and glossy glass textures. He started a series of figurative bird NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 85

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above Canteen, 2022, handblown glass, braided hide, cork, 7 × 5 × 2 in. opposite Black-on-Black Olla, 2022, handblown glass, 10 × 10 in.

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sculptures focusing mainly on quail and parrots, birds with a history in the area.

Ira captures a great likeness of the birds, with their rounded stomachs and pointed beaks, while adding a decorative pattern over the bodies using buttercut. Some of his ollas have lids in animal forms, including birds and deer.

In the past few years, Ira has combined abstract sculptural elements with more figurative images as in his Taos Water Carrier from 2017. Lujan attached a face to a twisted, loosely figurative form with an olla on her head, a reminder of historical Pueblo women carrying water in ollas on their heads.

For the muddy texture on Taos Water

Carrier, Lujan applied an additional layer of glass over the form, which he then dunked into a pail of water to cause the outer layer to crackle. The abstract swirl where the body would be suggests a body wearing a blanket in motion, while the face is hand-sculpted, adding a more realistic element.

C O V I D - 1 9 b r o u g h t m a ny challenges for the artist as well as innovations. The increase in fuel cost encouraged Lujan to switch from using a natural gas–powered furnace to an electric one. Finding some of his preferred materials has become increasingly difficult, especially some of his favorite colors since one of the main colored glass

IRA LUJAN

factories in Germany closed. He has been looking for new sources. At the same time, being unable to travel during the pandemic meant that he had more time in his studio, allowing him to explore other techniques where he was able to complete many pieces.

In recent years, Ira moved his home and studio from Tesuque, just north of Santa Fe, to Albuquerque, where he continues to create new pieces. In the past few years, Lujan’s work has been featured in many places, most notably at the Seattle Tacoma International Airport and in the exhibition Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass (2021–23), which was launched at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe. It has traveled to the Wichita Art Museum in Kansas, where it is on view through September 10, 2023. Ira continues to develop his approach to glasswork, technically and visually, experimenting with new materials, designs, and shapes.

ILUJAN.ARTSPAN.COM

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PROFILE

Navajo Printmaker, Painter, Sculptor & Jeweler

MELANIE YAZZIE

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

W

HILE KNOWN worldwide for her printmaking and painting, Melanie Yazzie (Navajo) has increasingly stretched her artistic practice into the third dimension. She’s taken her art larger with metal sculptures and smaller with jewelry and textile design.

“What leads into the sculpture and jewelry was that in my lifetime I have had a lot of different health issues,” the artist explains. “I’ve lived with type two diabetes, and we’ve had different types of cancers within the women in our family.”1 Melanie Yazzie is Navajo of the Tódik'ǫzhi (Salt Water clan) born for the Tódich'ii'nii (Bitter Water clan). She is an art professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she heads their printmaking program and has taught for 16 years. She has kind, merry eyes and a ready laugh.

In the early aughts, Melanie had a potential cancer scare but had to travel to France, which delayed getting the test results. When she returned to the States, she learned she was clear of cancer. Even so, she says, “The doctor asked, ‘What are you doing to get in a better space?’

And I said I was just making my art.”

That got her thinking. “I focused on these self-portraits that were internalizing beautiful gardens and good things. After that health scare, I said, ‘Now I want to do those large sculptures; to have a presence and create something that represents hope and happiness.’”

Collectors and other friends have asked her to create portable artworks.

“A lot of people said, ‘I have a print and paintings, and we could get sculpture, but I’m having health issues, like you, and I want to carry something with me,’” Melanie says. “So I spoke with Kerry Green at [Glenn Green] Galleries and said, ‘We could do some scarves so that

people can wear those when they have hospital visits or when they are having a challenging time.’

“That’s what’s driven the sculpture pieces, fabric pieces, surface design pieces, and scarves. The jewelry pieces are objects that people can carry with them

1. All quotes from Melanie Yazzie in discussion with the author, May 15, 2023.

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above Melanie A. Yazzie with Animal Stack: They Help Each Other, 2021, aluminum with multicolored patina, 39½ × 14¼ × 8¼ in., edition of 40. opposite Making New Friends, 2018, anodized and powder coated aluminum, 66 × 68 × 26 in., edition of 8. All images courtesy of the artist and Glenn Green Galleries.

MELANIE YAZZIE

when they’re having times of difficulty.”

She casts sterling silver to make pendants, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and more with motifs shared by her two-dimensional art: all manner of plant and animal life. Unfurling sprouts and blossoms, dogs, sheep, horses, kittens, dragonflies, butterflies, turtles, Navajo women and girls, and transformative figures in between abstraction and figuration all make appearances in her silverwork.

“A lot of the jewelry pieces that I design are inspired by the prints,” Melanie says. “I take a stencil and then make it into this silver cuff or pendant. It’s taking an aspect of my work and making it into this more permanent, wearable thing.”

On the opposite scale are Melanie’s cast aluminum sculptures, some lifesized, some even larger. She keeps them in the burnished silver of the metal or powder coats them in saturated monochromes. Many of them are flat surfaces that stand perpendicular to the earth.

Several feature stacks of smaller creatures standing on larger animals or humans, as if ready to embark on an adventure.

They recall the Bremen town musicians from German folklore. Melanie says, “In the past people have said, ‘You can make them more three-dimensional,’” and her smaller bronze sculptures are very much in the round. But for her larger aluminum works, she says, “The importance of it is that it’s taking a small Mylar stencil or paper stencil from my print and then just growing it into this larger thing that can sit in a garden.” The figures—plant, animal, human, and combinations thereof—are enlivened by their negative space. The structures frame and activate their surroundings. “It just makes you recognize things outdoors more than you would if you didn’t have the sculpture there,” says Melanie. She appreciates the multisensory aspects of the public works, the changing light, the scents of nature, and even sounds.

The silhouetted forms have interiors cut out to reveal different symbols.

Melanie uses vertebrae motifs to signify inner power in works such as Strength from Within and her Pollen Keeper series. “If you use a stick on them, it makes a tune.” She says collectors let their children or grandparents use sticks on the

sculptures to elicit sounds. “They’re interactive,” she laughs.

Families and individuals have begun donating her sculptures to cities. Sandra Harris Woods recently donated Two Minds Meeting to Loveland, Colorado, 35 miles north of Boulder. The tomato-red sculpture features two figures with stylized heartlines and raised open hands, enthusiastically conversing with each other—an action represented by a bridge with four prancing dogs over their heads. Sandra donated the sculpture to her hometown in honor of her parents. At the unveiling, Melanie recounts, “They had a gathering and they said when they go to the place to be with the sculpture, they have this sense of like they’re visiting these two people that are in the sculptures of Two Minds Meeting. When they sit there, they talk with the sculpture. The piece is by Lake Loveland in a really beautiful setting.”

The sculpture so moved the city’s poet

laureate, Veronica Patterson, that she composed a poem about it and read it at the installation ceremony.2 The City of Boulder also installed a sculpture by Melanie. “That one was just dedicated right before COVID. An anonymous donor gifted it to the city of Boulder. It’s one of the only Native artist pieces that’s on Pearl Street,” says Melanie.

“What I find powerful is that it’s a representation of a Native American woman’s work in a place of importance.” Public art

by Native artists helps correct the persistent invisibility that Native Americans face today in the United States.

PLANTING SEEDS PUBLIC ART AND PERSONAL ADORNMENT reach audiences beyond museums and galleries. First people engage directly with the art, then Melanie advises to “ask for the story.” Verbally

2. Austin Fleskes, “New Lake Loveland art installation dedicated with shoreline celebration,” Loveland Reporter-Herald, July 21, 2021, web.

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PROFILE

“I have to make work with hope to give myself strength to deal with the heavy stuff.”

above She’s Singing, 2018, cast sterling silver pendant, 3¼ × 1¾ in. opposite She Has a Bird Singing Inside, 2010, monotype on paper, 30 × 42½ in.

sharing the narrative creates a connection between the artist and the audience.

“Oftentimes when I tell the story, I’ll ask them to share a story from where they’re coming from. If people can listen to the story and share their own story, then we can meet in this place of sharing. It makes for a strong connection that goes to a deeper level. That’s exciting for me.”

Of her collectors, Melanie says, “They’re educating people about [the art] they’re wearing. ‘This is a heart image designed by Melanie Yazzie and it symbolizes having a strong heart. There’s an image of a backbone in the piece to give me strength.’” She continues, “The education process is slow, and I’m not out there protesting but working in a quiet, even, steady way. I’ve been [an activist] for many years now with this quiet way of educating people and changing people’s way of seeing our community.”

She says her art can come off as “nonthreatening, cute, and sweet. Then people start to learn about it. They learn something new and then they educate other people.” She admits, “In the early years when I was in grad school, a lot of my work was very confrontational.

I realized with this type of work I was preaching to the choir. The ones who I really wanted to reach would be leaving the room or being like, ‘Oh my God, angry Native.’” She laughs.

Her artwork is whimsical but also vulnerable. It doesn’t lecture but invites the viewer in. “If the work has sweet, whimsical bright colors, people think, Oh, she doesn’t know how to draw,” Melanie says, laughing again. “Then they come into the artist talk, and the work is about Native women being sterilized.3 I’d be able to unpack all this history. They stay because then they’d be like, ‘I had no idea that that happened in our history. We can tell our grandchildren about that. And you did it in such a nice way that I was able to hear it.’”

While Melanie grew up learning about atrocities against her nation and other Native communities and researched them further, she says, “I needed to make art that could lift me up and be strong, so I could do the work of making change.

I was having a lot of health issues, and making the work helped me gain strength and create a beautiful world for myself to live in.” She continues, “I needed to create this happiness. And it’s funny because at times people will say, ‘Oh, you’re just happy-go-lucky. You don’t even know what’s going on.’ And then I’ll tell them about issues with Ukraine or what’s happening in this Indigenous nation and this place and this place. And I’ve been in this location.” People are shocked by the depth of her awareness of global issues and her extensive travel. “If all I made was work about that, I wouldn’t have any hope. I have to make work with hope to give myself strength to deal with the heavy stuff.”

Melanie’s artwork serves as a catalyst to encourage viewers to get involved and educate others. Her mindful approach to creating art comes from her family. “Both my grandmothers were weavers, and they would take months and

3. “1976: Government admits unauthorized sterilization of Indian Women,” National Library of Medicine: Native Voices, web. The US General Accounting Office admitted in a study that Native American women were routinely sterilized, often without their consent or knowledge, at least up to 1976.

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MELANIE YAZZIE

months to make their weavings. It was important to them that things were done in a certain way with good intentions.”

She continues, “My grandmothers would always say when you make the work, you have to put yourself in a good frame of mind of creating and bringing the beauty into you. If you’re not in the right head space, there’s going to be problems with it. You may have to start over or undo a bunch of the weaving.”

These lessons Melanie shares with her students. “If their head isn’t in the right place, I’m like, ‘Maybe you need to leave class right now and go see a movie, go for a hike. Go do something fun and put yourself in a better space.’ And they were like, ‘Are you serious?’” She absolutely is, but experience has taught her to be confident. “You’re going to come back, and you’re going to be here for six or eight hours longer because you fed your soul.”

She knows not all of her students will become professional artists. “The goal isn’t to become an artist … It’s about learning what studio habits mean,

learning how to keep a clean work area, respect for your classmates, respect for the work, and for the process.”

Melanie brings her art world experiences to the classroom. “I remember when I went to Europe, in Italy and Estonia, at the openings, the artists were all given a bouquet of flowers. They thanked everybody and asked the artist to speak. Local musicians just volunteered to come play.” The communities appreciated the artists so much they volunteered and donated. “They wanted to come and celebrate all of the artists. Local people brought flowers for everybody.” She was impressed by how open the exhibition receptions were to the entire community.

“The art openings in New Zealand have been the most moving for me because there’s always this protocol that takes place of how they open a space,” Melanie shares. “Elders speak and then the community sings to tell the ancestors that what the speaker is saying is valued.

And then guests are invited to say something. They say that all the artworks

are alive and that they are greeting the works. That type of acknowledgment, the speeches, songs, and dances—they touch all the five different senses.”

Inspired by the experiences, Melanie says, “When I have openings with my students at school, I usually ask the students to all say something. We try to have a bit of food. And I’ll say, ‘I want you all to be acknowledged.’” She believes in celebrating accomplishments together and marking moments, such as the end of a semester. “That teaches people how to appreciate and hold those moments as special—when an opening happens or when we meet an artist. That’s what I’ve learned from being in other countries.”

PRINTMAKING & MAKING IT HAPPEN THE BACKBONE of Melanie’s artistic practice has been two-dimensional art: layered and stenciled paintings and printmaking. The latter is a surprisingly NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 91

PROFILE

“There’s something beautiful about the paper quality and the smell of different inks.”

above Thinking Good, mixed media, 30 × 42 in. opposite Day Dreaming While Herding Sheep, 2023, mixed media on wood panel, 20 × 20 in.

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international field. Presses invite artists to use their facilities, and collaboration is a hallmark of the media. “The printmaking field is like a large family. We all have different processes,” says Melanie.

“We’re open to sharing. We do all these different print exchanges where we are sharing our works and our stories with each other. There’s this passion for making varied editions and coming up with themes. I’ve organized well over a hundred print portfolios. They have local, regional, national, and international artists, and they’ve been shown all over the world. I put established artists with emerging artists in print exchanges. Then those works get into exhibitions and collections to help make change or give those younger artists an opportunity to become a part of a museum collection.

“There’s something beautiful about the paper quality and the smell of different inks. The layering is really powerful.” Melanie primarily works in monotypes with stencils. She lays ink on plates and stencils that are rolled through

a press. Different prints share motifs, but each print is unique. “A lot of the prints that I make are monotype, so they’re one of a kind. There may be an icon that you see over and over, but each time I do a series of works, I’m cutting that stencil again and making it like new. And when I finish a series, I cut up the stencils and then next time start another grouping to keep the integrity or the specialness.”

Printmakers are also a highly mobile community. Her art has allowed Melanie to travel, exhibit, host workshops, and give talks across the globe. She has exhibited and taught throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

Melanie is in high demand to exhibit, speak, and teach about her artistic talent and vision, but she modestly credits her success to more practical reasons as well. “If I can overachieve and over-deliver, I will,” she says, and “I always tell people if you work hard and make your deadlines, people will be amazed.” She also recommends arriving early to events.

“If the opening’s at six, I’ll be there at five.

MELANIE YAZZIE

They might need help setting up chairs or tables, and I can help with that. That impresses people. At home, that’s what you do for a ceremony. You show up early, you stay after to help clean up. You offer to go get things.”

HOME & THE FUTURE WHILE COLORADO is the ancestral and historical homeland of many tribes, the state only has 1.1 percent self-identified American Indian and Alaska Native population4 and is home to only two federally recognized tribes: the Southern Ute Indian Tribe of the Southern Ute Reservation and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. Melanie is active in regional Native American communities. Denver, a destination in the relocation era, has a robust intertribal Native population. “During Denver March Powwow,” one of the largest powwows all year, Melanie says, “people come from up in Alaska and the East Coast. Everyone comes out so I go there and catch up with everybody.”

Melanie is also active in showing her art close to home. The McNichols Civic Center recently hosted her solo exhibition, Nizhoni Way: New Works by Melanie Yazzie. “I’ve done a lot of projects with the Denver Botanic Gardens. I’ve done a bunch of different things with the Denver Art Museum,” she says. “One of my colleagues at CU is Anna Tsouhlarakis [Navajo/Muscogee]. She runs the foundations program.” Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College has hosted both of them for artist residencies and given Melanie a solo exhibition. “I’ve kept busy within the Native community here, and then of course with all the travel and research I do at the university, that keeps me busy too.”

Maintaining a busy schedule is no small task, and Melanie is working on numerous current and upcoming projects. She is part of a multivenue project by the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, agriCULTURE: Art Inspired by the Land. This unique art project pairs artists with local farms to create site-specific artworks. Melanie 4. “Colorado: 2020 Census,” U.S. Census Bureau, August 25, 2021, web.

worked with Wild Wellspring Farm, a subscription-based vegetable farm owned and run by two queer women. The exhibition, along with exhibits at the museum and on other farms, is on view through October 8, 2023.

As part of Melanie’s ongoing collaborations with the Denver Botanic Gardens, she’ll present in-person talk about monotypes on July 30, 2023, and an online presentation on November 8, 2023. Then in Loveland, Danielle SeeWalker (Standing Rock Lakota) included Melanie in her group exhibition, Woven in Resilience: A Feminine Perspective of Contemporary Indigenous Art, at the Artworks Center for Contemporary Art. Melanie will deliver a three-part lecture in connection to that exhibition, which is on view from October 13 through December 23, 2023.

A print exchange she organized with Catherine Prose, Supporting Indigenous Sisters: An International Print Exchange, is on view at the Wichita Falls

Museum of Art at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, through September 30, 2023. Her artwork is part of Our Shared Breath at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon in Eugene, on view through October 22, 2023.

“I’m always making work and being very productive so that when I’m called upon, as soon as the invitation comes, I’m like, ‘I’m printing it now and I’ll send it out to you in two weeks.’ And they’ll say, ‘It’s not due for three months.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m done. I’m ready. I’m so excited!’”

She laughs.

“As artists, we just don’t exist within our own space. We always have a lot of support. It’s important to remember the people who’ve supported you and are with you and just acknowledge and be grateful for all the help.” She advises emerging artists, and really all of us: “Be excited about what you’re doing. Don’t be jaded. Be excited, be giving, be on time, be helpful, be grateful.”

INSTAGRAM @ARTISTMELANIEYAZZIE NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 93

TONY A. TIGER

Sac and Fox, Seminole, Mvskoke

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Represented by:

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REVIEWS

BOISE, IDAHO

The Art of Jean LaMarr above Jean LaMarr (Northern Paiute/Pit River), Untitled (Cover Girl), 1989, offset lithograph, 21½ x 30 in., collection of the Nevada Museum of Art, gift of the Brandywine Workshop and Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Both images courtesy of the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno. opposite Jean LaMarr (Northern Paiute/Pit River), I Heard the Song of My Grandmother, 1990, serigraph on paper, 34½ × 46 in., ed. 64/67, collection of the Nevada Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by the Orchard House Foundation.

Boise Art Museum

A

S A CHILD visiting her grandmother’s home, a young Jean LaMarr (Northern Paiute/Pit River) learned stories and cultural teachings from her relatives. Due to the trauma that her father endured as a student at Sherman Indian High School, she could not discuss these teachings in her father’s presence. Still, LaMarr held on to that knowledge and observed the impacts of racism on her father until she would discover how to articulate both.

Her art ultimately allowed her to share her stories, along with the stories of those before her who had been silenced. “You said what I wanted to say,” an elder once told LaMarr.1

A comprehensive and monumental retrospective organized by the Nevada Museum of Art and currently on display at the Boise Art Museum, The Art of Jean LaMarr is an engrossing experience. By my third or fourth pass through the exhibition, I exhausted myself darting from piece to piece. Looking back, I realized my approach was wrong. My first mistake was to take photos instead of just looking.

Now, I am convinced concentrating on individual pieces was not the best strategy by which to frame Jean LaMarr’s life’s work. The exhibition, like LaMarr’s work, demands recognition as a complex whole, with each piece revealing insights about the next. My second mistake was to believe I could fit Jean LaMarr’s life’s work into one review.

LaMarr’s career as an artist, activist, and educator spans almost 50 years and extends beyond Western art concepts. Her media includes printmaking, painting, collage, video, graphics, mixed

1. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from Jean LaMarr in discussion with the author, May 26, 2023.

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REVIEWS

media, and murals. Her historical content spans anywhere from yesterday to 500 years ago.

I was drawn to works such as Untitled (Cover Girl) (1989), a painterly lithograph in which LaMarr reclaims the body image of a young Fort Sill Apache woman whose form was originally appropriated in the late 19th-century photographer William S. Soule. I was intrigued by Ms. Coyote Invites Junipero Serra Over for Dinner (2015). The tiny figure of Junipero Serra is dwarfed in Ms. Coyote’s shadow. This feminine coyote, represented as a sexualized, armed, and hungry mannequin sculpture, emits qualities of a Western dominatrix. The viewer is left to wonder whether Ms. Coyote is Junipero Serra’s objectified sexual dream or nightmare. Blending comedy and Indigenous feminism, this Eurofication of Coyote shows her clearly controlling her situation, much like how LaMarr took control of her career against a Eurocentric art world.

A citizen of the Susanville Rancheria, LaMarr was born and raised in Susanville, California. In 1964 she moved to San José as part of Indian Relocation policy. In 1970 she enrolled in San José City College. Unlike in her hometown, at college young people were encouraged to question authority. She joined activist movements and began to organize protests in support of Indigenous rights.

She supported the American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz and the Pit River Occupation in Shasta County.

LaMarr transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a BFA in 1976. There, she found that she was often the only Native American student in her classes and that her instructors were unsupportive of her art. The Chicano Mural Movement and their silkscreen prints helped her realize that art was not only for museums. She learned that art was a way to connect with the community and the greater public. As LaMarr is quoted in the exhibition text, “Art was for the community … not just for one person.”

Murals are no different than the ancient petroglyphs of her ancestors.

LaMarr told me, “Murals show that people are still here.” She views most Western art forms as Eurocentric and elitist, so she

put murals and printmaking to her own use. She established a print studio in the Intertribal Friendship House in Oakland, taught printmaking at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, and, in 1994 at Susanville, founded the Native American Graphic Workshop, which exists to this day.2 Both LaMarr’s collaborative and personal works are best viewed in their relation and tandem with her storytelling, which the exhibition achieves through video and printed quotes. Her works are colorful compositions, and each contributes to the larger Indigenous narrative. They provide the viewer with intriguing and aesthetic portals into key moments of a larger California and Great Basin Indigenous experience. She portrays longstanding tensions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and, most importantly, brings the beauty of Indigenous cultures to the forefront.

The exhibition shares lessons in Native American survivance.

Themes in the exhibition, such as cultural stereotypes, representations of Native women, legacies of colonization, and environmental justice, are timeless and reflect the joys and hardships Native peoples have endured throughout history into the present. Yet viewing LaMarr’s art as individual pieces is to experience her

life’s work out of context. Piece by piece, story by story, her work percolates in one’s psyche until the imagery builds into a collective bubble. Then, POW WOW! as the poster proclaims in Ms. Coyote Invites Junipero Serra Over for Dinner.

As Jean shared, “Indian humor helps get us through sadness.”

Curated by Ann M. Wolfe, the Andrea and John C. Deane Family Chief Curator and Associate Director of the Nevada Museum of Art, The Art of Jean LaMarr first opened at the Nevada Museum of Art in 2022. The exhibition then traveled to Boise Art Museum in 2023 and will go on to IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.

The accompanying catalogue, Jean LaMarr (2020), includes essays by Wolfe; Judith Lowry (Maidu/Pit River/ Washoe); Anya Montiel, PhD (Mestiza/ Tohono O’odham descent); Lucy Lippard; and several other art scholars. The book is a comprehensive curated collection of LaMarr’s body of visual stories.

“I use my artwork in a beautiful way so that I can bring people into the artwork, but yet I have a message for them,” LaMarr said, “and that message has to do with how I feel our Indian people are being treated.”3 —Nanette Kelley (Osage/Cherokee Nations)

2. See Beverly R. Ortiz, “Jean LaMarr’s Final Monoprint Workshop,” First American Art Magazine no. 33 (Winter 2022), 44–51.

3. Tsanavi Spoonhunter, “Jean LaMarr: Purple Flower Girl,” Nevada Museum of Art, YouTube video, April 19, 2022, 16:21, web.

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above Installation view of My mind is with the weather. Photo: Blaine Campbell. Image courtesy of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin.

LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA

My mind is with the weather Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin

E

VERY DAY, NATURAL AND UNNATURAL FORCES surround us, connecting us in ways that are seen, unseen, and always felt. These were some of the thoughts that I was left with after experiencing My mind is with the weather, a three-piece collaborative installation by Indigenous artists Tanya Lukin Linklater (Alutiiq) and Tiffany Shaw (Métis). Now in its third iteration, this exhibition began as a solo installation which opened at the Oakville Galleries in Ontario in June 2022. Each work in this collaborative installation reminds us that every movement has a corresponding response.

Lukin Linklater is an artist and scholar from southwestern Alaska and a member of the Native Villages of Afognak and Port Lions in the Kodiak Archipelago.

Her video installation, This moment an endurance to the end forever (2020), takes us to several places on Indigenous lands where we contemplate how Indigenous women articulate physical movement.

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What moves these women are their breath and their surroundings, as exemplified by the two women moving together on large flat rocks in a creek. Surrounding them are the sounds of birds, trees moving in the breeze, streaming water; they breathe through each movement. These women do not move in smooth balletic motions but in the ways that women move through life—slowly, tentatively, or fast with rapture. There is grace, beauty, and struggle in all of these gesticulations. Text appears on the screen between scenes: “We inhale song, breathe language. We exhale sigh pant gust gasp, sounding. We recall a sigh shared amongst strangers.” As both women breathe, their energy ripples from them into the world, like the flowing water beneath their feet that causes the moss to move. Breath, breathing, and motion connect us all to each other and sustain us.

Lukin Linklater, whose art practice includes dance and performance, is also present in the video. Standing in front of bookshelves, her movements appear rigid, but I saw them as unyielding, as she bends and shifts just enough. At her feet lay two spines from Indigenous geometries (2019), a piece Shaw and Linklater originally created for the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Initially, I wondered why they were not with the rest of the spines shown in the original piece. I then understood

this to mean that so much is still incomplete within Indigenous lives. Still, we hold all the pieces around us, within us, together.

Indigenous geometries unites the artists in this exhibition. Imploring the viewer to be mindful of Indigenous family life, this multipiece mobile structure is a reference to home. In her artist’s talk, Lukin Linklater spoke about the importance of the modularity of these bent wood spines, and that, when they are taken apart and put back together, their structure is never quite the same.

According to the artist, the spines metaphorically represent the Indigenous lives that have been pulled apart by colonization, policies, and removals. Like these fractured lives, the spines require additional care and attentiveness which acts as a reminder that what you bring emotionally to the work enters the work and becomes part of it. Be it sound, laughter, music, language, voices, and even negativity, each spine acts as an archive by storing all of these memories and emotions.

Notably, four of the spines rest together on the floor near the structure in the gallery and two others remain in Lukin Linklater’s home. This separation refers to our collective Indigenous displacement and acknowledges that some have found their way home while others

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never will. The spines are constructed of ash wood. Like so many of our ancestors who were lost to genocide, these trees are disappearing across Canada due to the invasive, destructive, and foreign emerald ash borer beetle. Ash wood is important to Indigenous peoples and its disappearance is a significant loss to communities, to our non-human relatives, and to the land.

The third piece of the exhibition is Tiffany Shaw’s …and other unseen forces (2023). The title is an addendum to the name of the exhibition. Shaw’s Métis lineage derives from Fort McMurray via Fort McKay and the Red River. She is an architect, an artist, and a curator based in Alberta. This long handwoven mirror Mylar piece, hanging horizontally in the gallery, was created for this exhibition and honors craft art as a practice that is embodied with memory. It connects to the other pieces in this exhibition through its attention to the bonds that exist within Indigenous families.

The artist refers to it as a creation for relationality. Due to historical and contemporary colonial policies that removed Indigenous children from their families, familial and communal bonds loosened or even broke. Most Indigenous families had no control over these factors.

Demonstrated by the strong tension within this piece, Shaw is weaving strength into her precious family and ensuring growth and survival.

This exhibition will continue to travel, opening at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio in the summer of 2024.

An exhibition catalogue with contributions by Eungie Joo, Frances Loeffler, Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota), Tanya Lukin Linklater, and Beth Piatote (Nez Perce) is expected to be released this year.

The pieces in this exhibition are: • Tanya Lukin Linklater, This moment an endurance to the end forever, 2020, single channel projection video with sound, 23:17 • Tiffany Shaw, …and other unseen forces, 2023, mirror Mylar • Tanya Lukin Linklater and Tiffany Shaw, Indigenous geometries, 2019, cold-rolled steel, laminated ash wood, paint, polyurethane, hardware.

—Yvonne N. Tiger (Cherokee Nation/Seminole/Muscogee)

NEW YORK

Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest Bard Graduate Center Gallery

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ISTORIC DINÉ TEXTILES from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) collection, never before exhibited, are spotlighted in Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest. This curatorial project is vast, encompassing a physical exhibition of 25 historic and contemporary Diné textiles as well as a virtual exhibition of approximately 250 older Diné textiles. Like many older Native American museum collections, these textiles were mostly acquired in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This project is hosted by the Bard Graduate Center (BGC) in New York City and was curated by Hadley Jensen, a non-Native visual anthropologist and BGC/AMNH postdoctoral fellow in museum anthropology.

AMNH is far removed from Dinétah (Navajo homelands), but Jensen began this work in 2018 and told me she embodies a facilitator role. Her curatorial

practice emphasizes consultation and collaboration with Diné weavers, artists, and scholars. Master weavers Lynda Teller Pete (Diné) and Barbara Teller Ornelas (Diné) guided the project in their roles as curatorial advisors and cultural consultants. Jensen met Teller Pete and Teller Ornelas in 2016 when she participated in one of their weaving workshops. In the introductory essay to the online exhibition, Jensen writes about the sisters, “As fifth-generation Diné (Navajo) weavers who grew up at the fabled Two Grey Hills Trading Post in northwestern New Mexico, their knowledge of this art form is deep and personal, and has, in turn, enlivened my own understanding of its histories, materials, designs, and techniques.”

Teller Ornelas’s Contemporary Chief Set (Three Miniatures) (ca. 2005) appears in the physical and virtual exhibitions.

The triptych comprises three finely woven miniature versions of the iconic Diné Chief Blankets, known for their striped patterns and large size. On its label, Teller Ornelas acknowledges the lack of artist names associated with early Diné textiles in museum collections. She vows to honor these uncredited weavers and writes, “Be Silent No More!”

Multiple Chief Blankets are in the earliest AMNH collections, one of them a second phase Woman’s ‘Chief ’ Blanket displayed physically and virtually

above Barbara Teller Ornelas (Diné), Contemporary Chief Set (Three Miniatures), ca. 2005, commercially processed, aniline-dyed Merino wool, respun by the artist; red, blue, and black, 90 threads per inch; white, 80 threads per inch, collection of Sue Bury, courtesy of Toh-Atin Gallery, Durango, Colorado. Photo: Da Ping Lou. Image courtesy of Bard Graduate Center.

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above Darby Raymond-Overstreet (Diné), Woven Landscape, Window Rock, 2022, scanned Navajo textiles, archival print on paper, courtesy of the artist, 36½× 41¼ × 2½ in. Photo: Da Ping Lou. Image courtesy of Bard Graduate Center.

adjacent to Teller Ornelas’s work. Past and present works are placed next to one another, prodding the audience to consider how past weavers shaped the path for today’s weavers. While the historic AMNH Diné textile collection does not have artists’ names for many of the works, including Woman’s ‘Chief ’ Blanket, their labels credit a once-known “Diné artist,” leaving us to ruminate about the identity of the weaver. In stark contrast, the label reports that Uriah S. Hollister, an army general and noted collector of Diné weavings, acquired this blanket for the AMNH collection. This is just one example of the rampant and systematic disregard of Native American artists’ identities that was once common museum practice. In 2023 this practice of disregard is a shameful history that museums have to face, reflect upon, and work to reconcile.

Both the physical and virtual exhibitions are organized by six themes regarding Diné weaving: Homeland and Cosmology; Ecology; Dyeing and Coloring; Techniques and Technologies; Design Elements; and Value and Exchange. With such expansive content, many other Diné collaborators contributed to the project. Their collaboration 100 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

is most apparent in the display of works by living weavers such as Kevin Aspaas (Diné) and Marie Begay (Diné). Furthermore, some of the labels have a feature where the audience can tap their phones to a small circle that links to audio reflections by contemporary fiber artist and weaver Tyrell Tapaha (Diné). While the exhibition text and labels include a plethora of information about the themes, I was most struck by the quotes from Diné knowledge keepers. In the label text for a Navajo loom with unfinished weaving (sash belt) (before 1910) from the AMNH collection, Tapaha says, “Every aspect of Diné weaving has teachings sowed from past generations that encourage learning generations to think critically about resource use, hard work, reverence, and persistence.”

What especially moved me in this exhibition were the recent landscape works by Darby Raymond-Overstreet (Diné) and Rapheal Begay (Diné).

Notably, Begay and Jensen are creative collaborators in co-curating Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles, on view at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe from July 2023 through June 2024. The advisory committee for that exhibition includes Lynda Teller Pete, Kevin Aspaas,

Tyrrell Tapaha, Larissa Nez, and Darby Raymond-Overstreet (all Diné). Each member of the committee was involved in the Shaped by the Loom project.

Raymond-Overstreet’s and Begay’s landscape works show the audience Dinétah, the land where the historic textiles in the AMNH collection were created.

Raymond-Overstreet and Begay also contributed to the exhibition’s collaborative 360 Experience project, an immersive digital space featuring imagery of Dinétah accompanied by a soundscape composed

by Connor Chee (Diné). Dinétah is a fundamental source of inspiration for Diné weavers and the 360 Experience exhibits the source. A team of contributors produced the impressive exhibition. New York City is located about 2,000 miles east of the Navajo Reservation. The audience may not be able to visit the rez, so this component brings the rez to the audience.

The physical exhibition was first on view at the BGC Gallery and is traveling to the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, from September 2023 to January 2024. The virtual exhibition is accessible on the BGC website. The beauty of the virtual exhibition is that audiences and Diné from anywhere in the world can view the AMNH collection.

In fact, after viewing the AMNH collection online, I sent a link of my favorite diyogí (rug), AMNH catalogue number 50.1/4421, to shínaaí (my older brother) who is a Diné weaver. Over Facetime we discussed whether the artist intended the diyogí as a child’s blanket, woman’s blanket, or saddle blanket. These crucial conversations highlight the importance of museum collections being accessible to source communities.

Jensen’s work with Shaped by the Loom is a stellar example of collaborative curation. The integration of Lynda Teller Pete (Diné) and Barbara Teller Ornelas (Diné) as curatorial advisors and cultural consultants was an essential component of the exhibition. I attended the opening reception in February 2023. Some of the Diné collaborators who worked on the project and I became emotional viewing the gallery. It was reminiscent of home.

Curating a space to evoke the sensibilities of Dinétah is no easy task in a gallery on the Upper West Side of New York City.

—Sháńdíín Brown (Diné)

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above Wendy Ponca (Osage), Seven Bends in the River of Life, 2023, installation. Image courtesy of the Osage Nation Museum.

PAWHUSKA, OKLAHOMA

Seven Bends in the River of Life Osage Nation Museum

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NSPIRED BY THE POWER OF A LINE, Wendy Ponca (Osage) woke up one night in 2017 and drafted a sketch in the notebook on her nightstand. She presented that drawing to then director of the Osage Nation Museum, Hallie Winter (Osage). They agreed the drawing should be manifested for local audiences.

The original schedule was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. With financial support from the Osage Nation Foundation, Seven Bends in the River of Life was finally installed with a public opening on May 26, 2023, at the Osage Nation Museum. This was important for Ponca, who wanted to see how Osage people would respond to a large-scale, textile installation. Inspired by the instructional artwork of Yoko Ono, which relied on simple didactic lessons, Ponca’s work presents a single textile installation within the Osage Nation Museum’s changing gallery. Five “sketches” are displayed on the adjacent wall, executed in a variety

of textile materials as additional playful explorations of the concept.

The installation relies on the power of a single line, both a phrase and a visual construction. Within the darkened gallery, one end of a long, draped, white silk cloth falls from the ceiling above. It lands at the rear of an 8-foot-wide by 24-foot-long platform close to the ground, where it winds from side to side, bending seven times until it spills off the opposite end of the platform and relaxes to the floor. Each bend in the cloth is accentuated by a light hidden beneath the cloth, casting a gentle glow into the space. These become the primary sources of light except for the directional light over each sketch.

The sensory-jarring installation includes the sound of moving water that reiterates the role of the river within the concept.

Anchored along the sides of the platform are pews, painted black, blending in with the dark environment of the room. These are surrounded by benches placed around the exterior walls of the room. Interpreted through an Osage cultural lens, the cloth serves as a metaphor for both the descent of the Osage people from the stars to the earth and their extended journey upon the earth. The cloth also can be the water

falling from the sky and flowing through the riverbed. Most importantly for the artist, each viewer brings their own worldview and interprets accordingly.

Ponca’s use of cloth is in direct reference to a line by Louis F. Burns (Osage, 1920–2012) in A History of the Osage People where he states, “In the Osage mind, seven bends of a river symbolized life.”1 Burns further wrote that the goal for every human was to live a long life, but that each life is faced with seven challenges to overcome. “Life is a river and we flow with it; we must travel the seven bends in the river of life before we reach days that are calm and peaceful.”2 His description of the metaphor can also be applied to the Osage people as individuals and as a tribe.

Ponca also considered how these seven bends resonated with the sawtooth design that is commonly used within Osage textiles, such as handweaving and ribbonwork. As a renowned textile artist, Ponca has often employed the sawtooth design in Osage regalia she makes for family members. The zigzag movement is frequently echoed through repetition with adjacent lines, which activate a simple form into vibrant adornment. The sawtooth design, like many Indigenous

1. Louis F. Burns, A History of the Osage People (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 21.

2. Louis F. Burns, Osage Indian Customs and Myths (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), 24.

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motifs, resonates with visual simplicity and also carries deep philosophical meaning that can take a lifetime of cultural participation to fully understand.

In the five sketches, the same bending line is explored through white cord, dye, and ribbons against contrasting materials. As soon as one recognizes that the line begins and ends strictly in one presentation in the first four frames to the left, the final frame disrupts that reading, resisting codification as a singular portion of the line. This disruption antagonizes a singular reading and playfully employs the elements of chaos that make life interesting. The initial presentation of the cloth textile installation holds the room singularly, but the material sketches add a sly hint of humor and invite further reflection. The placement of the pews and benches invites visitors to participate by sitting on the pews or to observe as the audience by sitting on the benches. Later this year, Alex Ponca Stock (Osage) will add paintings that place Osage people within ecclesiastical formats to further complicate easy interpretations. These certainly refute that this installation is historicizing in nature.

To experience Ponca’s work in a centralized location within the Osage Nation Reservation, I suggest that the installation has another interpretation: as an act of cultural resilience and sovereignty. With the impending release of the Martin Scorsese movie, Killers of the Flower Moon—though perhaps coincidental—the Osage Nation Museum is preparing for a new onslaught of visitors on the heels of the throngs that visited when the David Grann book of the same title was released. These visitors, often in pursuit of a personal experience with a fictionalized version of the truth, will be introduced to Ponca’s visionary installation. Each visitor will be invited to interpret this simple white line from their own worldview but may not realize that this invitation is an expression of cultural generosity welcoming them into an Osage world and, perhaps, anticipating that we live in a time that is a bend in the river.

Seven Bends in the River of Life is on view through December 31, 2023.

—heather ahtone, PhD (Choctaw/Chickasaw Nation) 102 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

RENO

The Art of Ben Aleck Nevada Museum of Art

B

EN ALECK’S FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION premiered at the Nevada Museum of Art in 1972.

Now, more than 50 years later, he returns to celebrate his body of work that spans decades. With exhaustive detail, his drawings reflect the place and people who raised him. This retrospective showcases more than 30 selected illustrations and paintings that honor the influences of his upbringing.

As a citizen of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe—the Kooyooe Tukadu (the cui-ui fish eaters)—Aleck expresses heritage that has directly influenced his work.

In a well-defined illustration, Pyramid Lake Paiute Elders, he intentionally uses the top and bottom abstracted border to showcase a mountain range. Past Northern Paiute leaders emerge from the clouds, but what grounds the piece is the sacred Pyramid Lake. This distinguished black-and-white drawing has since been selected for the museum’s permanent collection, marking its significance as a work of art.

In 2015 the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, an urban tribal nation where Aleck is an active community member, commissioned him to create Kwe'naa'a

(ca. 2010). The Northern Paiute name of the painting translates to “eagle” and centers the honorable Being atop a tribal design with a landscape backdrop of a mountain range and sagebrush, two staples of the high desert terrain. This particular acrylic-on-canvas work is also the centerpiece for the exhibition as the leading promotional image and catalogue cover.

Kwe'naa'a encompasses several elements of Aleck’s work. His drawings and paintings often incorporate Indigenous stories, cultural art media and depictions, United States historical narratives, water use issues, and a deep appreciation for our natural resources. They also allude to the importance of tribal histories, from origin stories to written historical accounts.

For instance, he purposely inserts the formation of the Great Basin landscape in order to provide an inspirational continuity. Aleck also uses strong blue hues throughout certain pieces of work.

In Pyramid Lake Paiute Elders, he uses the lake’s geography as a firm reminder of how deeply we derive from the water and land.

Even more notable is Pea Teepa, or Stone Mother, a beautiful graphite illustration that embodies the Pyramid Lake creation story. This tufa rock formation is in a holy area of Aleck’s tribe’s origins.

His drawing is a humble homage to this sacred formation historically described as the figure of a woman with a covering over her head seated next to a basket.

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ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

Faye HeavyShield: Confluences Pulitzer Arts Foundation

K According to the creation story, Stone Mother was in mourning and sat on the earth next to a mountain and began to cry. above Ben Aleck (Pyramid Lake Paiute), Pea Teepa (Stone Mother), n.d., graphite, ink on paper, 11 × 17 in., collection of the artist. Both images courtesy of the Nevada Museum of Art. opposite Ben Aleck (Pyramid Lake Paiute), Water Jug, Beaded Bottle, and Basket, 2005, print on paper, 11 × 14¾ in., collection of the artist.

This is a Paiute-specific basket made of the noninvasive willow plant.

According to the creation story, Stone Mother was in mourning and sat on the earth next to a mountain and began to cry. She wept for so long that her tears became a great lake that today is known as Pyramid Lake. After much time, she eventually turned to stone along with the woven willow basket by her side. Stone Mother has remained there to this day on the eastern shore of the lake. Pea Teepa is a remarkable reflection of the original rock formation that he’s rendered more than once.

A distinct colored drawing honors a cultural art medium and a precious resource. Titled Water Jug, Beaded Bottle, and Basket (2005), this is an accurate impression of the tightly woven willow basket vessel used to carry water, which is a highly valued resource to the Paiutes

and many tribes across the United States.

However, his rendition displays the tightly woven pattern not just in the intricate basket but also in the background patterns. It’s a time-consuming, detailed work that embraces the ancient art form within a new setting.

As an educator and artist, Aleck focuses on Indigenous stories including oral histories and those of the natural world, but he also confronts environmental concerns. He addresses issues such as the importance of water and the need to honor the land one is from and the stories and history one was raised with. His accessible approach is a treat for diverse museumgoers who will walk away with new appreciation.

The Nevada Museum of Art’s mandate includes their commitment to amplify and celebrate the many voices of Indigenous artists in the Great Basin and the Sierra Nevada. As a result, The Art of Ben Aleck will be on view through January 7, 2024, at the museum’s Barbara and Tad Danz Gallery. Accompanying this exhibition is a 128-page catalogue available online and at the museum, which shares insights of the Pyramid Lake region with a global audience.

—Tsanavi Spoonhunter (Northern Arapaho/Northern Paiute)

A I NA I A RT I S T FAY E HEAVYSHIELD describes herself as a conduit for her ancestors’ thoughts and dreams.

Her sculptures, installations, drawings, and photographs derive from the vast prairie landscapes of her homelands and her body, inseparable from her identity as a Blackfoot woman.

This spring the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis organized Faye HeavyShield: Confluences, which is composed of two bodies of work and two site-specific commissions: aiyo niitahtaan (2023) and Honor Cahokia (2023). aiyo niitahtaan (2023) features 3,500 photographs of rivers taken by the artist over the past decade. The images are printed on different kinds of paper and hung in rows, stretching 75 feet in length. Ripples and waves reflecting sun and moonlight range from greenish-grey to cerulean blue.

Collectively they suggest a forceful rush of water.

This commission responds to river confluences in St. Louis (where the Missouri and Mississippi rivers merge) and Blood 148, the artist’s home reserve in Alberta where the St. Mary and Belly rivers converge. aiyo niitahtaan roughly translates to “oh river” and is the only work in the exhibition titled in HeavyShield’s first language.

The installation dovetails seamlessly with the Pulitzer’s architecture designed

by Japanese minimalist Tadao Ando.

HeavyShield’s work hangs parallel to a reflecting pool framed by windows. aiyo niitahtaan also complements one of the few permanent works at the Pulitzer, Ellsworth Kelly‘s painting, Blue Black (2001).

Honor Cahokia (2023) consists of 49 maroon domes arranged on the floor in a perfect grid. A single line on the wall behind the sculptures traces convex and concave silhouettes of mounds and borrow pits, contextualizing the installation within the local landscape as molded by earlier Indigenous people.

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above, top Faye HeavyShield (Kainai), aiyo niitahtaan, 2023, photographic installation, 900 in. wide. Background: Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Black, 2001, painted aluminum, 336 × 70 in, collection of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. Photo: A. Ferber. above, bottom Installation view of Faye HeavyShield: Confluences. Photo: A. Ferber.

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Honor Cahokia reflects the artist’s admiration for the work of Indian-born British sculptor Anish Kapoor. Its form and color draw parallels to Eva Hesse’s Schema from 1967. Despite differing motivations and conceptual roots, Hesse and HeavyShield share a love of materiality.

Curator Tamara Schenkenberg introduced HeavyShield’s recent works with a gallery of sculptures made between 1992 and 1997. Abstract forms made from wire, cloth, wood, paper, and molding compound share similar shades of pale ochre. The artist connotes this with age and organic materials such as bleached bones and grass.

fort belly (1992) is a small mound surrounded by wooden stakes. Local viewers may see this as signifying historical earthworks, extant today at nearby Cahokia. The posts recall different circles of timber through time: a wood henge, a medicine wheel, a lodge, and a Sun dance arena. But they also mirror colonial fortifications erected to segregate people.

Their placement around a corporeal bulge resembling a pregnant body could serve to deter trespassers or mark astral alignment.

Two very personal works in the last gallery allow viewers a glimpse into how the artist processes absence and loss through acts of making. the red line (2021) suggests an umbilical cord made from red beads. Much of HeavyShield’s practice incorporates repetition, which she finds meditative. This work was made in isolation during the pandemic.

She shared that “the red line was a refuge for me at a time when this was much needed. It stood in for family when we couldn’t share in person solace, laughter, and grief.” i’ll know you when i see you (2021) is comprised of multiple sheets of paper of all sizes: some lined, some index cards, with repeated silhouette portraits. Sometimes hair is indicated, but most of the profiles are featureless. Many sheets are divided like wallet-size school photos.

Only after making several drawings did the artist remember one of the few photos of her mother at boarding school.

HeavyShield, her siblings, and her parents attended residential school. She does not identify as a survivor because, to her, the term suggests victimhood. Though she spent time with her mother, HeavyShield realized she never knew her intimately.

The mindful act of drawing helps her accept this disconnect.

The Pulitzer is an ideal venue for HeavyShield’s quiet aesthetic, which offers a welcome retreat from the incessant deluge of daily life and media, but remains grounded in the essential elements of land and body. Faye HeavyShield: Confluences closes on August 6, 2023. A digital guide to this exhibition is available on the app Bloomberg Connects.

—Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

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SANTA FE

California Stars: Huivaniūs Pütsiv Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian

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HE SUBTITLE of this exhibition, Huivaniūs Pütsiv, is Chemehuevi and translates to “stars with us/around us.”

Celestial motifs reoccur throughout this show devoted to the art by Indigenous Californians but also speak to the stature of luminaries like James Luna, Rick Bartow, and Fritz Scholder, as well as those of rising stars like Cara Romero and Jamie Okuma. A who’s who of Native art history, the exhibition tracks the shift from modernism into postmodernism and the contemporary art era. These works also respond to California’s history, from missions to the gold rush to today’s challenges. On a deeper level, they trace the ascent of the Anthropocene.

This show hits a raw nerve and evokes a sense of loss. Half of the 14 named artists have died, with several departing in the last decade. The recorded voice of James Luna (Puyukitchum/Ipai/ Mexican-American, 1950–2018), who died suddenly of a heart attack, permeates the entire exhibition. The artworks in California Stars: Huivaniūs Pütsiv accordingly speak to the fragility of human life, the precariousness of life on the planet itself, and the healing power of art—for the artists, their tribes, and beyond. The works address genocides but also surviving those genocides.

Prior to Spanish contact, Indigenous California had more linguistic diversity than all of Europe. Today, California has the most tribes and the most Native people of any US state. The history of colonization in California— which includes Indigenous enslavement at Spanish missions to the massacres and bounty-hunting of the American Gold Rush era—was brutal and devastating.

Greed and the extractive economy are among the exhibition’s key themes. A

terminus in the 1950s and 1960s US Indian Relocation policy, California has attracted economic migrants throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, Native Californians are vastly outnumbered in their own lands. Despite facing some of the most destructive and most recent massacres in the United States, California tribes persevere. Many of the leading Native American artists of the 20th century hail from the state.

above Rick Bartow (Wiyot, 1946–2016), Man & Owl Conversation, 2007, wood, metal, graphite.

Photo: FAAM.

While celebrating Indigenous Californian artists, this exhibition, curated by Andrea Hanley (Navajo), focuses on those with ties to New Mexico and predominantly those working in Western “fine” art forms. Notable exceptions are beadwork artist and fashion designer Jamie Okuma (Luiseño/Shoshone-Bannock/Wailaki) and jeweler Liz Wallace (Navajo/Nisenan Maidu/Washoe). Works from the Wheelwright’s permanent collection provide the exhibition’s foundation. Since its 1937 founding, the Wheelwright has long highlighted California artists. The

Wheelwright’s curator from 1998 to 2018, Cheri Falkenstien-Doyle, hailed from Los Angeles. Under her guidance, the museum hosted solo exhibitions for Judith Lowry (Maidu/Pit River/ Washoe), Okuma, and Wallace in 2011.

The museum also exhibited works by Frank LaPena (Nomtipom Wintu, 1937– 2019), Harry Fonseca (Nisenan Maidu, 1946–2006), and Fritz Scholder (La Jolla Luiseño, 1937–2005).

A north star in Native art history, the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is represented by Scholder, its first painting instructor, and early student Bill WarSoldier Soza (Soboba Cahuilla/ Apache, 1949–2014), who each have two works in California Stars. Scholder leaned heavily into his interest in the occult, which comes through in his desiccated mummy-like bronze, Another Martyr No. 4 (1994). “Wild” Bill was critical of Scholder who he said was influenced greatly by his students. Soza’s Indian on a Merry-Go-Round (1965) loosely resembles Frank LaPena’s Untitled (Painting) (1975) in that both prominently feature orange, horned figures.

While LaPena’s figure is mysterious and evokes petroglyphs, Soza’s vacillates between comical and menacing in a tension that refuses to resolve.

This unresolved awkwardness also appears in two sculptures by Rick Bartow (Wiyot, 1946–2016), particularly Man & Owl Conservation (2007). The carved wooden owl and man tilt precariously, joyous almost to the point of delirium.

All three of Bartow’s works feature male nudes and speak to the almost taboo subject of masculine vulnerability. None is so poignant as Deer Magic (2013), an acrylic-and-graphite painting of an overlapping man and deer spirit, engulfed by the repeated text ABC 123. After surviving a stroke, the artist said this phrase over and over to regain his memory and voice. This work celebrates recovery from the brink and the healing power of creating art.

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above Installation of Dao Lulelek (2021) by Judith Lowry (Maidu/Pit River/Washoe), sculptures Man & Owl Conversation (2007) and Raven Dreams Man (2010) by Rick Bartow (Wiyot, 1946–2016), and NDN Summer (2022) by Cara Romero (Chemehuevi).

Photo: FAAM.

106 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

it evokes are disquieting. The oldest piece in the show is Burial Tree (1967) by Frank Day (Konkow Maidu, 1902–1976), a bright, delicate oil painting of corpses in various states of decay bound to a tree. A self-taught artist, Day turned to painting after an injury to share his knowledge of Maidu oral history, medicine, and cosmology. Day’s works are frankly disturbing, with detailed images of insects crawling on human flesh or a snake coiled around a decaying stump. Medicine and oral history are not for the fainthearted.

Yet Day’s works exemplify how art can serve as living seeds to regrow a culture.

Day influenced Frank LaPena, who in turn taught Harry Fonseca and Judith Lowry—all of whom are represented in California Stars.

The focal point of the exhibition is James Luna’s Take a Picture with a Real Indian (1991). Reading a poem, Luna’s voice beckons visitors from the main gallery into a smaller gallery displaying the relics of his performance at the Whitney Museum of American Art:

video, Polaroids of participants on the wall, and life-size photographs of Luna mounted on wood. Luna’s likenesses segue from looking defiant, wearing nothing but a loincloth and moccasins; to stoic (with added powwow regalia); and finally, vaguely annoyed, hands in the pockets of his khaki pants accessorized with a belt and tucked-in shirt.

In the 32 years since Luna performed this piece at the Whitney, the cultural context has changed dramatically. The piece doesn’t succeed as a selfie station since most visitors don’t want to be implicated as tourists objectifying Native people. “Chiefing,” or publicly performing indigeneity for money, has morphed into something more subtle and insidious, such as publicly giving land acknowledgments in regalia for fossil fuel companies or teams with Native mascots.

Changes in public perception of Indigenous identity appear in Cara Romero’s NDN Summer (2022), created in collaboration with Leah Mata-Fragua (Coastal Chumash), but these concerns

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are dwarfed by larger existential threats.

The artists’ daughters served as models, wearing regalia made by Mata-Fragua.

The young women delicately pick their way through a fraught landscape. Abalone shells speak to the challenges tribes face in maintaining their cultural lifeways when natural resources collapse due to climate change. California has declared a moratorium on abalone harvesting.

In the photograph, baskets overflow with money and tribal identification cards, as some tribes reckon with staggering casino profits while other historic tribes are denied federal recognition due to the United States’ failure to ratify treaties. The hellish orange glow of the background speaks to the devastating wildfires ravaging communities across the state in recent years. But this orange color is picked up by California poppies, a visionary medicinal plant. Despite these challenges and traumas, the women walk forward, hand in hand, undaunted.

Hung nearby, Judith Lowry portrays three fire demons in Dao Lulelek (2021). Their inhuman mouths gape menacingly but their dance crowns and movements suggest poise and grace. In Californian forests, fire belongs. Many pyrophytic tree species such as giant sequoias and coastal redwoods rely on fire for seed dispersal. A century of fire suppression, unchecked development, and megadrought have thrown off the natural balance of fire and the land.

The context of these works colors Liz Wallace’s exquisite jewelry and metalwork. She enhances the metals and stones with her delicate and demanding plique-à-jour and coiling techniques. The wild iris tiara, butterfly pin, and crystal-beaded basket, whose colors and shape evoke the earth and its waters, speak to the fragile beauty of plants, animals, and Indigenous cultures. These are so precious and can so easily be destroyed. Even Jamie Okuma’s Untitled (Floral Beaded

Backpack) features graceful beadwork protected by exaggerated spikes. These call to mind punk fashion, sea urchins, and the need to protect the vulnerable.

Six of the seven living artists exhibited in California Stars are women, which calls attention to the resilience of Native women and underscores a curatorial strategy beyond documenting the march of decades. This shift provides a challenging but powerful experience.

Global and celestial perspectives place human activity within a much vaster context. These artists share personal and collective losses, but the cumulative effect is one of historical resilience. The artists share a clear-eyed vision of the obstacles that humans have faced and continue to address with courage, grace, and compassion. As Cara Romero writes in her artist statement for NDN Summer, “So much has changed in our lifetimes yet we survive.”

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 107

Meet the Next Wave of Indigenous Curators

A roundtable discussion, cohosted by the Coe Center and First American Art Magazine As more Native American curators join the field, learn what innovations they bring to curating Indigenous and mainstream art to connect to wider audiences.

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Moderator: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Independent Curator

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Rachelle B. Pablo (Diné), Curator, 516 Arts

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Melissa Shaginoff (Ahtna Athabascan/Northern Paiute), Independent Curator

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Tess Lukey (Aquinnah Wampanoag), Associate Curator of Native Art at the Trustees, Boston, MA

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August 18 2-4 PM

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Explore works from the Coe Center’s permanent collection.

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Coffee and light refreshments will be available.

Free and open to the public.

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More info at www.redcloudart.show

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REVIEWS

TORONTO

Kent Monkman: Being Legendary Royal Ontario Museum

C

ANADA’S LARGEST natural history museum invited Fisher River Cree artist Kent Monkman to develop an exhibition in response to its vast collections and the colonial enterprise to broadly amass such collections. The resulting site-specific installation featured 35 new paintings that challenge Eurocentric epistemologies. As explained by historian Adrienne Mayor in the exhibition catalogue, “[Indigenous] creation stories, reports of fossil discoveries, and interpretations of remarkable remains of extinct creatures … are often overlooked and dismissed because they are expressed in mythic language.”1 In a vibrant and highly realistic style, Monkman effectively weaves Indigenous knowledge systems into the grand narratives of Western science.

above Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree), The Rocks Hold Their Stories, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 32 × 501/2 in. Photo: A. Ferber.

In contrast to “authorless” museum texts, Monkman’s alter ego Miss Chief explains the exhibition in a first-person voice. She guides viewers through three epochs: We Have Always Been Here (13.8 billion BCE to 1857 CE), Colonial Interruption (1857 to 2022), and Our Way Forward (2022 to 13.8 billion CE).

Racist hierarchies that classified non-European material culture as ethnographic artifacts resulted in natural history museums that collected and exhibited Indigenous material culture next to fossils and dinosaurs. This integration remains a conundrum for museums that now want to acknowledge living cultures. In his exhibition, Monkman embraced the paleontology relics at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) to declare the coexistence of mîmîkwîsiwak (little people). Quotes from Miss Chief emblazon the walls: Our peoples read the stories of the land in the giant bones of long ago.

The Rocks Hold Their Stories (2022) depicts mîmîkwîsiwak exploring a 76-million-year-old horned dinosaur skull. The magnificent skull is displayed directly across from its portrait.

Monkman based other paintings on a mammoth tooth and mastodon bone from the ROM collection.

Before the settlers came, our beautiful and wise children learned early how to live on the land and provide for themselves and their families.

Scenes of thriving ancestors segue into the relatively recent past: 1857, before any treaties with Canada were signed or any land was ceded. Compositional Study for Our Stories Come From The Land (2022) offers a glimpse of a joyful multigenerational gathering. Acknowledging the omnipresence of nonhuman beings, a spirit figure emerges from the bonfire smoke.

1. Adrienne Mayor, “When Giants Walked the Earth: Indigenous Fossil Knowledge,” in Kent Monkman: Being Legendary, ed. Kent Monkman (Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2022), 37.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 109

REVIEWS

signs of contemporary life—nail polish, glasses, jeans, tennis shoes, and occupations listed—ground the individuals firmly in the present. This is Monkman’s ongoing Shining Stars series.

Monkman’s intervention challenges viewers to rethink received histories. And it is fabulous.

Being Legendary ran from October 8, 2022, to April 16, 2023. A catalogue is available with contributions by Kent Monkman/Miss Chief, Gisele Gordon, Adrienne Mayor, Paulette F.C. Steeves (Cree/Métis), Keith Goulet (Rocky Cree), Luana Shirt (Plains Cree), Wilfred Buck (Swampy Cree), Josh Basseches, Silvia Forni, and Craig Cipolla.

—Andrea L. Ferber, PhD above Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree), Compositional Study for The Going Away Song, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 60 × 90 in. Photo: A. Ferber.

When they came to take our awâsisak, they said they were taking our children to schools.

Those places were not schools.

They were forced labour camps, which taught our children violence and fear.

Two paintings introduce the boarding school era. The Escape (2022) shows a child hiding while their mother misdirects a Mountie. In Study for The Sparrow (2021), a child reaches toward a tiny messenger in the form of a bird perched on a dormitory window. One scenario might be a foil to the other, showing different outcomes for different children, or the images might imply the chronology of one child who was captured despite attempts to hide.

We honour them and say their names.

The heart of the exhibition is a memorial to eight Indigenous men who were executed on November 27, 1885, on Treaty 6 territory, which later became Saskatchewan. At the time, Indigenous people across Turtle Island were fighting to survive under inhumane conditions enforced by brutal settler-colonial regimes. In a recurring scenario that played out over and over again, a group of Cree men retaliated when rations were withheld and their families were starving.

They were sentenced to hang, and chil110 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

dren from Battleford Industrial School were forced to watch.

Compositional Study for The Going Away Song (2022) gives one a view of this scene from underneath the gallows. Mounties with rifles face uniformed students corralled by nuns. The cold and stoic faces of the sisters contrast sharply with the children, who express varying degrees of confusion, fear, and sadness.

In the foreground, the spirit of Miss Chief clutches a young girl and boy to her chest as they mourn together. A thunderbird flies among the clouds, indicating greater eternal powers.

On an adjoining wall, a suite of eight paintings depicts mîmîkwîsiwak bereft over beaded moccasins. Across from the paintings, the moccasins from ROM’s collection are displayed in a mirrored case. Each painting symbolizes a strategy of survivance: language, knowledge, family, medicine, ceremony, tradition, joy, and hope.

Our future ancestors continue to light the paths in miyo pimatisiwin, living in a good way, with true connection.

The final gallery features eleven large-scale portraits. Ribbon skirts, jingle dresses, beaded adornments, and tattoos indicate various nations. Landscapes from the tundra to the plains and woodlands remind viewers of the vast geographic area from which these people came. And

REPORTS LONDON, ONTARIO

Kelly Greene, Artist Residency Western University

I

N 2021 WESTERN UNIVERSITY posted a call for applications seeking its inaugural Indigenous Artist-inResidence. Artist Kelly Greene of London, Ontario, was selected from an impressive slate of candidates. Greene is a citizen of the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, a Mohawk of the Turtle clan, and of Oneida and Sicilian ancestry.

She studied visual arts at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and, after she relocated to London, she earned a BFA from Western University in 1994.

From 1990 onward, Greene exhibited across Canada and the United States and also installed two permanent public artworks at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario. Mainly installation, painting, and sculpture, Greene’s work is concerned with environmental crises— such as the plight of bees vanishing due to pesticides, habitat loss, monoculture, and human overpopulation—as well as the impact of colonialism on Haudenosaunee cultural identity.

REPORTS

When COVID-19 lockdown restrictions eased in April of 2022, Greene opened a major solo exhibition, Continuing Accountability, at Western University’s Artlab Gallery. It was intended as a companion exhibition to Greene’s 2020 solo exhibition, Accountability, at McIntosh Gallery, which closed on short notice due to the pandemic. Continuing Accountability surveyed nearly 30 years of Greene’s practice by including videotaped performances created in 1993 and 1994 during BFA coursework and large installations such as Earth Nurturing Fate (1997) alongside new paintings like Respect, Creation, Gratitude, and Peace (2021) and Her Reciprocal Love with Coneflower (2022). Not only did the exhibition fulfill the requirements of the residency, but it also established Greene’s work as pivotal to Western University’s ongoing Indigenous initiatives and reconciliation efforts.

A second major exhibition opened during Greene’s residency titled In My Dreams at Glenhyrst Art Gallery in Brantford, where I serve as curator and head of collections. The City of Brantford sits adjacent to the Six Nations of the Grand River community and includes the Woodland Cultural Centre, so Greene’s body of work is critical for telling the story of the land and the history of its people. Several months before the exhibition opened, 215 unmarked graves were discovered at a former residential school site in Kamloops, British Columbia. The finding prompted a shift in the direction of the exhibition and the creation of new work that, as Greene wrote in her artist’s statement, challenged “the actions taken

by Canada’s government and church in attempting to eliminate Indigenous culture, language, and population.”

The results were twofold. On one hand, Greene drew her attention to Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, as primary subject matter since his actions were instrumental in the creation of the residential school system and subjected Indigenous children to it.

Her single orange inmate jumpsuit with Macdonald’s name inscribed above the chest pocket accompanied the central work in the Macdonald series, the New

Unofficial Portrait of John A. Macdonald.

Surrounded by an ornate gold frame, the painting features Macdonald in a solitary confinement prison cell wearing only underpants and standing in a dignified pose. For Greene, the prime minister had finally faced a kind of posthumous requital for his political actions, which are now understood to be cultural genocide.

The Macdonald works personified Greene’s anger, and audiences immediately sensed this tension. Positive reviews in media outlets matched the vast majority of favorable reviews from gallery visitors. At a time when statues of Macdonald were being removed across Canada, there were only a few criticisms

On the other hand, Greene transformed the entirety of Glenhyrst’s additional gallery space into an unorthodox classroom titled The Classroom That Should Have Been (2022). “My transformed classroom,” she writes in her artist statement, “was one I’d thought of frequently, when I’d wonder how [Canada] could have been if settlers were respectful and interested in learning about the people who already lived here instead of what occurred.” This reimagined classroom demonstrated core beliefs and values of Haudenosaunee peoples through visual material such as pottery, maps, a flag, paintings, drums, rattles, and more.

above Kelly Greene (Mohawk/Oneida), Pumpkin Flower and She Mutually Nourishing, 2023, acrylic, sand, glue on reused canvas, 16 × 20 in.

of Greene’s treatment of Macdonald; however, some visitors were furious with what they saw, and others went so far as threatening to condemn the exhibition online and in the media. As a small public art gallery, we should facilitate difficult ideas like those expressed in Greene’s work to prompt meaningful conversations, as long as they are civil and constructive, and not shy away from them for fear of Facebook retribution.

At the front of the space was a monitor that played the teachings of knowledge-keepers Oren Lyons (Seneca) and Sidney Hill (Onondaga) on a loop, in addition to a large blackboard with instructions on how to spell words such as turtle and bear according to the Six Nations of the Grand River.

Each desk contained a writing pad and pencil inviting visitors to practice their spelling. Glenhyrst Art Gallery, Greene NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 111

REPORTS

above Kelly Greene (Mohawk/Oneida), The Classroom that Should Have Been, 2022, installation at Glenhyrst Art Gallery.

writes in her statement, “is situated on the land that was granted to [Six Nations] in the Haldimand Treaty of 1784, and my thought was to [teach] some basic knowledge about those who were here first.” The site specificity of the installation urged visitors to reflect on the larger meaning of what they’re learning, why, and where. Ultimately, it was a poetic statement on historical revisionism, a way of seeing what could have been instead of the reality of what was.

Greene’s residency has since drawn to a close, but the exhibitions during her residency remain uncompromising. By reimagining the Canadian classroom as a contested site on contested land surrounded by Haudenosaunee art, teachings, and ceremonial objects, she produced a powerful aesthetic vision. It is one that disarmed the present moment with potent reminders of the past. The opposing responses to the exhibition are evidence that ideas about the land and the history of its people are supercharged and unreconciled. They are certainly still unfolding. In My Dreams facilitated crucial discussions that may not always be popular but will always be necessary if small public art galleries are to stay relevant and influential.

—Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD 112 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

TULSA

Gilcrease in Your Neighborhood Gilcrease Museum

W

HILE THE NEW GILC R E ASE M U SE U M building is being constructed, the institution is bringing art from its collection to the greater Tulsa metropolitan area and calling the public art experience Gilcrease in Your Neighborhood. The museum conducted a public vote in June and July 2022, in-person and online, so residents could choose their three out of nine pieces of art from the Gilcrease collection. The three winning artworks have been reproduced to be installed at 31 locations across the Tulsa area. All three pieces are by Indigenous artists of the Americas.

Since October 2022, and through September 2023, the three pieces chosen by the public have been displayed for three-month periods, with a monthlong transition to change out the art. Programming inspired by each artwork is planned for select locations to get as many people as possible to interact with the art and Gilcrease. In addition to experiencing the artworks in different

settings—outdoors on hiking trails, in public squares and parks, indoors at medical and social services offices, libraries, and even a grocery store—people can use their phones to scan a QR code at each site to pull up an informational page about the project and the artwork.

The current reproduction on display in the Tulsa area is the only one by a living artist. Norma Howard (Choctaw Nation/ Mississippi Choctaw/Chickasaw) painted Gathering Corn in 1998. The artwork depicts a Choctaw family harvesting corn by moonlight. This final Gilcrease in Your Neighborhood installation can be seen at the 31 Tulsa-area locations until late September 2023. Events and programs with harvest themes are scheduled.

From October 2022 through January 2023, the public art experience featured Forest Scene by Pop Chalee (Taos Pueblo, 1906–1993). Painted in the mid-1950s, this whimsical painting depicts the densely wooded forest around Taos, New Mexico, where the artist spent time as a child.

From late February 2023 to May 2023, the artwork featured was An Island of Redbuds on the Cimarron by Sergeant Brummett Echohawk (Pawnee, 1922– 2006). Painted in 1968, it is a vibrant, impressionistic oil painting that captures a serene moment on his family homestead on Pawnee treaty land. A World War II code talker in the 45th Infantry, Echohawk was known to use his military-issued combat knife to paint.

“The partner sites are as varied as our diverse community,” said Alison Rossi, Gilcrease Museum’s Anne and Henry Zarrow director of learning and community engagement. “We worked to partner with organizations and locations all around the Tulsa area so we could bring Gilcrease art to as many people as possible. We hope to delight and surprise our neighbors with art in unexpected places.”

“We are ver y excited to be partnering with Gilcrease in Your Neighborhood,” said Debbie Starnes, the former chief development officer of the Indian Health Care Resource Center of Tulsa.

“Gilcrease Museum has a wonderful collection of Native American art and artifacts. We are honored to have a few of those pieces at Indian Health Care Resource Center of Tulsa.”

REPORTS

“It has always been a dream of mine to bring art to our families, and Gilcrease Museum is making that happen,” said Tim Newton, executive director of the Tulsa Dream Center. “Our goal at Tulsa Dream Center is to expose our families to things that they didn’t imagine. Together we are doing that.”

The partner locations are the Central Library, Chandler Park, Dennis R. Neill Equality Center, Family and Children’s Services, Gilcrease Hills Club House, Greenwood Cultural Center, Guthrie Green, Hardesty Regional Library, Hicks Park, Hunter Park, Indian Health Care Resource Center of Tulsa, Keystone Ancient Forest (Sand Springs), Lacy Park, LaFortune Park, Martin Regional Library, Thomas K. McKeon Center for Creativity at Tulsa Community College, Mother Road Market, Oasis Fresh Market, Plaza Santa Cecilia, Rudisill Regional Library, the Center for Individuals with Physical Challenges, Gathering Place, the RiverWalk (Jenks), The Rose District (Broken Arrow), Tulsa City-County Library, Tulsa Dream Center, Tulsa Zoo, Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness, University of Tulsa, Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 577, Whittier Square, and Zarrow Regional Library.

Gilcrease in Your Neighborhood is made possible throughout the Tulsa community with support provided

by Arts Alliance Tulsa, Arts Commission of the City of Tulsa, Atkinson Family Foundation, Dan E. and Neva L. Brannin Charitable Foundation, City of Tulsa/ARPA, Geffen Family Charitable Foundation Fund at Tulsa Community Foundation, Frank and Carol Mulhern, the Oklahoma Arts Council, ONEOK, William S. Smith Charitable Trust, Charles and Marion Weber Foundation, Kathleen P. Westby Foundation, and Windgate Charitable Foundation Endowment.

Gilcrease Museum is closed while a new building is being constructed on the same site; it is expected to be completed late 2025 or early 2026. The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, known as Gilcrease Museum, houses a comprehensive collection of the art, culture, and history of North America. Thomas Gilcrease (Muscogee, 1890–1962) established Gilcrease Museum in 1949 in Tulsa. Today the interdisciplinary collection contains more than 350,000 items. The museum represents hundreds of Indigenous cultures from across North and South America, with material culture and archaeology ranging from 12,000 BCE to the 21st century. The collection includes more than 350 years of American paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, including the largest public holdings of art of the American West.

Adjacent to the museum, and open during construction, the Helmerich Center for American Research houses the Gilcrease Library and Archive.

The collection includes manuscripts, photographs, maps, rare books, print portfolios, and broadsides related to the history of North America from the 15th to the 20th centuries.

—Heather A. Hope

top Norma Howard (Choctaw Nation/Mississippi Choctaw/Chickasaw), Gathering Corn, 1998, watercolor, gouache on paper, 12 × 155/8 in., collection of the Gilcrease Museum. All images courtesy of the Gilcrease Museum. middle Pop Chalee (Taos Pueblo, 1906–1993), Forest Scene, ca. 1950s, distemper on paper, 19¾ × 25½ in., collection of the Gilcrease Museum. bottom Brummett Echohawk (Pawnee, 1922–2006), An Island of Redbuds on the Cimarron, 1968, oil on canvas, 28¼ × 38⅛ in., collection of the Gilcrease Museum.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 113

ART+LIT

Cree Writer, Poet & Lawyer

MICHELLE GOOD

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD characteristic, if you will. Writers observe, consider, and record. Early on, this way of relating to the world played a key role in clarifying my thinking on things that matter to me. Finding clarity through writing keeps me coming back.

B

ORN IN KITIMAT, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Michelle Good is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. As a child, Good was affected by the Sixties Scoop. She was apprehended and placed in the Canadian foster care system. After working with Indigenous organizations for decades, Good earned a law degree from the University of British Columbia (UBC) at the age of 43. Her legal work in the private and public sectors focused on advocating for Indigenous residential school survivors.

In 2014 Good earned a master of fine arts in creative writing from UBC, which is where the early phases of her debut novel, Five Little Indians (2020), was composed. Five Little Indians tells the story of five Indigenous students as they attempt to recover from the trauma that impacted them during residential school. The book is a commercial and critical success, earning Good several awards, including the 2018 114 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

HarperCollins Canada/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction, the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and the 2022 Canada Reads competition.

Though known for her fiction, Good explores several literary genres, including poetry and nonfiction. Toronto’s Tightrope Books selected her poetry for The Best Canadian Poetry 2016 in English and Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English (2017). Good’s second book, Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada (HarperCollins, 2023), includes personal essays and stories that detail Native lives in Canada today.

MRS: What draws you to write, and what keeps you coming back?

MG: Writing is such a fundamental part of who I am. I’ve been writing since I started keeping a journal as a young child.

I think there is a demeanor that is particularly conducive to writing—a personality

MRS: Writing for law is vastly different from writing prose or poetry.

It’s interesting that you have this experience. Do you see any points of interaction between writing law and writing fiction?

MG: It’s all storytelling. Regardless of style or intended audience, it is about creating a world to convey an idea, a feeling, a truth, or an experience. The only distinction is the voice or language of expression. It is different for different audiences. Each genre has its challenges, but I think fiction can be most challenging as it so often relies on a sometimes-fickle muse.

MRS: You began working on Five Little Indians, your debut novel, during your time at UBC studying creative writing. Can you describe what the book looked like then?

MG: Structurally it was very similar to the final manuscript. The real difference was in the fine-tuning of the trajectories of the lives of each character, decision-making about their fate and how it would come to them, and making sure the writing was in a style accessible to as many audiences as possible.

MRS: I served as editor for Eli Baxter’s memoir, Aki-wayn-zih: A Person as Worthy as the Earth, which describes Eli’s early life in Northern Ontario and his residential school experience.

Five Little Indians and Aki-wayn-zih are trauma-related books. Though known as fiction, your book is based on your mother’s and grandmother’s residential school experiences. How do you write about difficult subject

ART+LIT

“… [S]elf-determination is mandatory. Reconciliation is meaningless without it.” matter, and does it concern empathy, responsibility, and compassion?

MG: I think of Five Little Indians as being about so much more than trauma. [This book] is about joy, love, adversity, determination, community, hope, and the characteristics that all people share. These characters experience these shared realities in the context of trauma, and I hoped it would illuminate how a child responds to trauma. While some of the descriptions reflect experiences of family members at residential school, the book is entirely a work of fiction. As I often say, something need not be factual to be true.

MRS: You used to write poetry before fiction. Did poetry help to shape your prose, and do you plan to revisit it?

MG: Again, whether it is poetry, prose, nonfiction, or professional writing, it is all storytelling. Genres are vehicles for story. I choose which genre will be the best vehicle for the story. Writing prose is very different stylistically than writing poetry. It was a steep learning curve moving from poetry to prose. I think I have a book of poems gestating. Time will tell.

MRS: The book includes seven conversations. Does one stand out to you more than others? Is one more urgent?

MG: I see the seven essays as facets of one overall conversation.

Each of these subjects require engagement, understanding, and action if we are ever able to establish a foundation of truth replacing the colonial lie. I hope this conversation will take us some distance in establishing a shared goal among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples that self-determination is mandatory. Reconciliation is meaningless without it.

MRS: What is the direction of fiction writing in Canada?

Where do you see the next 50 years heading?

MG: Hang on, let me pull out my crystal ball! Having watched the rise of an Indigenous literary canon and the insistence that we must tell our own stories, I am confident that a whole new batch of brilliant, young Indigenous writers will take the world by storm.

MRS: What is most difficult

about writing or your MRS: Your second book, creative practice?

Truth Telling: Seven above Cover of Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life MG: Settling in. It always seems in Canada (HarperCollins, 2023). Cover art by Jim Oskineegish (Ojibwe).

Conversations about that the floor desperately needs opposite Michelle Good.

Image courtesy of the author.

Indigenous Life in Canada, watering or the plants pruning was released in May 2023.

Is this book a continuation as I flirt with the muse. Finding from Five Little Indians? Why is this book needed now? the flow and immersing myself in the story can sometimes be MG: I wouldn’t say it is a continuation of Five Little Indians a challenge. except in the context of hoping it will inspire people to reconsider what they think they know and to engage in meaningful MRS: Now that Truth Telling is released and out into the conversations about the myth of Canadian history. Seeing that world, what follows it? history through the lens of Indigenous experience of it is a MG: I have a few projects on the go, but the next one will be a critical element of substantive and meaningful reconciliation. novel—another historical novel set in the Prairies during the Without the understanding of the truth of colonial history and time of treaty making and resistance. its impact on Indigenous peoples, there can be no foundation for MICHELLEGOOD.CA a relationship that will support Indigenous self-determination.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 115

ART+LIT

DEFYING GRAVITY So many rivers we wandered without helmsman or guide.

Some so shallow the stones barely below the surface,

glacier shrapnel once jagged, now tumbled round and smooth.

Others, honey rivers wide and slow, the breeze rich with warm clover.

They made us light in their embrace, these rivers, whether our bodies splayed them open

or we lay beside them laughing in key with the timeless rumble of water and stone; If I were a river

I would be blue and brown and green at once;

clear as glass, the stones bright, light, a rusty refraction.

Would you swim in me again?

Would you ride the river inside me as you once did?

Could we both be born over in a rushing river of light and hope?

I wish I were a river.

—Michelle Good (Cree)

116 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

ART+LIT

KAYLENE J. BIG KNIFE

A

DIGITAL ARTIST, graphic designer, illustrator, and educator, Kaylene J. Big Knife (Chippewa Cree) is a contract marketing specialist for Blue Stone Strategy Partners, a Native-led advisory firm. Based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, she explores the color possibilities, bold outlines, and soft gradients of digital art to their fullest. Subarctic and Northern Plains floral beadwork are strong influences, as are Japanese and American comics.

In 2013 she earned her AFA in interactive graphic design and a business certificate from the Institute of American Indian Arts. In 2017 she earned her BA in Native American studies with a minor in studio art from the University of Montana, Missoula. In 2019 she earned her MA in linguistics with an emphasis on Native American languages from the University of Arizona before she began teaching courses such as graphic design, digital storytelling, and photography at Stone Child College, the Chippewa Cree tribal college.

Big Knife also shares her research through presentations at events such as Ezhishin, the first symposium on Indigenous typography. For her master’s thesis, she developed educational materials for children to learn Cree syllabics. Part of the broader Canadian Syllabics writing system, this is a sleek, geometric script that features glyphs for syllables modified by diacritical marks. The syllabics are also used for Algonquin, Ojibwe, Inuktut, Dene, and neighboring languages.

Her diverse studies all contribute to her artwork. She writes in her artist statement: “I thread the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation landscape, the Cree language, tribal stories, and Chippewa (Ojibwe) blossoms.” She sprinkles strawberries, juneberries, buffalo berries, and other culturally significant plants joyfully across the picture plane. Enlarged Benday dots, in the style of Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, accent her portraits.

Native cosmonauts explore outer space in her Indigenous Futurist narratives.

First Peoples Fund named her an Artist in

Business Leadership Fellow in 2022. That year she also transformed her designs into earrings. While her schedule is packed, she still makes affordable prints and even Zoom backgrounds available to the public. With her many skills, it will be fascinating to see where Big Knife takes her creative practice next!

KAYBIGKNIFEDESIGN.COM

above Kaylene J. Big Knife (Chippewa Cree), Iskwewahk: The Anointing of Heart and Fire, digital art, 11 × 17 in.

Iskwewahk means "women" in Cree, and its translation closely ties to the Cree terms for fire and heart, as women are the heart of the home and bring warmth, comfort, and life to the home. opposite Kaylene J. Big Knife (Chippewa Cree), Heatwaves and Horsemint in the Mountains, digital art, 13 × 19 in.

Both images courtesy of the artist.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 117

MEMORIAL

RON CARLOS May 7, 1970–May 3, 2023

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LUENT IN BOTH PIIPAASH AND O'ODHAM LANGUAGES, Ron Gary Carlos held a wealth of cultural knowledge that he readily shared. He taught not just members of his own Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community but Tohono O'odham, Cocopah, Fort McDowell Yavapai, Gila River Indian Community, and other neighboring tribes. He taught children, youth, adults, and elders about Piipaash and O'odham cultures, arts, languages, and homelands.

Ron lived most of his life on the Salt River Reservation in Maricopa County, Arizona. His family were Xalychidom Piipaash and Akimel O'odham. He worked for the Salt River Cultural Resources Department in the O'odham Piipaash Language Program and was deeply concerned for younger generations to know their cultures, so he got them to create art, dance, explore outside, and speak and sing in their tribal languages.

In 1994 at the Huhugam Ki: Museum, Ron attended a pottery class led by Phyllis Cerna (Gila River Piipaash, 1940–2005) and her daughter Avis Pinion (Gila River Piipaash). They taught him the entire process of paddle-and-anvil pottery making, perfected by their Huhugam ancestors. Long after that first class, they encouraged him to continue since few Salt River potters were left.

With the paddle-and-anvil technique, Ron tapped the outside of the clay with a nymaxam, a carved wooden paddle, while holding a smooth stone in its interior. He mined clays—creams, yellows, and reds—from Viikxwet, or Red Mountain, on the east end of the Salt River Reservation. He laboriously processed clay by hand, sculpted the pots, painted them, burnished them, and fired them outdoors.

Ron specialized in red-on-buff, grit-tempered pottery, and painted elegant fine lines and geometric forms in red on a buff or cream-colored slip. But he also experimented with solid red interiors and entire pots burnished to a gleam. He even made black paint from boiling down 118 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

above Ron Carlos, Heard Museum workshop, August 2021. Photo: Samantha Toledo. Image courtesy of the Heard Museum.

mesquite sap. In addition to geometric designs, he painted animal and human figures with either curved or straight lines like sleek petroglyphs. He formed effigies, often humans, birds, or frogs, into the pottery through minimal sculpting and incising. Some pots had undulating fluted rims. He created mugs and pipes.

He said that the actual sculpting of the pot was the easiest part of the laborious and demanding process.

For years Ron was the last full-time potter for his tribe. He finally found a serious apprentice when he met August Wood (Navajo/Tohono O'odham/Akimel O'odham) in 2010. They were part of an O'odham visit to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian’s collections. Having studied the O'odham and Piipaash pottery, Ron explained the use for each pot. August kept asking Ron questions about the pottery, so Ron invited him to visit and make pots after the trip. A 2015 Southwest Folklife Alliance master-apprenticeship

award allowed Ron to take days off from his demanding job to teach August the hard work of locating, mining, and processing clays. Ron was confident that August could sustain and pass on the legacy of paddle-and-anvil ceramics.

So many weekends found Ron, and often August, demonstrating, teaching, and exhibiting at schools, museums, and other venues throughout Arizona. The Pueblo Grande Museum Archaeological Park in Phoenix hosted Ron’s first pottery demonstration. His work is in many collections including the Tempe History Museum. Casa Grande Ruins National Monument commissioned Ron and Jacob Butler (Salt River Onk Akimel O'odham) to create two monumental ceramic murals now on permanent display.

Besides all aspects of pottery making, Ron taught net beadwork, shellwork, sandal-making, and gourd art, from whimsical painted ornaments to ceremonial rattles. He also was a singer and knew the Alysha (Bird), Qwaaq (Deer), Vospo (Empty House), and other song cycles and taught tribal youth to sing and dance to these. He even played accordion in the Waila or Chicken Scratch style.

The Heard Museum Guild commissioned filmmaker and artist Steven J. Yazzie (Navajo/Laguna Pueblo) to produce Paddle and Anvil: A Piipaash Pottery Tradition. This brief but powerful documentary about Ron is online, as are many cultural videos published by the Salt River Schools. He acknowledged little has been written about his tribe, so his videos provide invaluable information.

His sister Monica Vavages (Salt River Pima-Maricopa) wrote, “His humility, kindness, and generosity were balanced by a wicked sense of humor and a willingness to be just a little bit outrageous.” He ignited sparks of curiosity in so many young Native people and encouraged them to embrace their own cultures. The knowledge and enthusiasm he shared will resonate through generations.

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

MEMORIAL

BENJAMIN HARJO JR. September 19, 1945–May 20, 2023

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UCH CAN BE SAID about the wonderful life lived by the talented and ever-colorful artist Benjamin Harjo Jr. (Absentee Shawnee/Seminole), with one word: happy. Ben lived a life happily inspired by the many things he did. A smile, laugh, joke, prank, or serious words of advice are things many of us who knew him will miss and cherish in our memories. His thoughts translated into the beautiful artwork he created in the forms of gouache, acrylic, pencil, pen and ink, woodblock prints, or mixed-media that live in the legacy he leaves behind for many to marvel at and enjoy.

Known for his high use of color and design, Ben’s work stood out in a league of its own. His inspirations came in many forms, from elements of nature, stories of the past, and even the squished frog he found on his daily walk with his wife Barbara which he later used to turn into a print. His mind always allowed artistic freedom to create beauty. His work was ever-evolving, and it was neat to see how each piece was so different from the next. Many of the works had themes and stories that could be very serious or the direct opposite in being very fun, lighthearted, and silly. One monotype, Casino Blues, told the story of someone either longing for the casino or maybe even being sad about losing money while there. Other works portrayed women picking medicinal plants used in the old ways, or gifts given by the Creator. His work tended to be abstract yet structured which reflected the versatility that his style and unique approach to depiction possessed. Experimental techniques and blends of materials also gave his work a voice—each piece loudly and boldly stated that it was a work of art by Benjamin Harjo Jr. Benjamin enjoyed many things in life, from his weekly garage thrifting and antiquing excursions with his best friend Dr. Gary McNeill to casino hopping with many of us, and especially traveling to art shows with Barbara. Many friends and extended art family relatives share their experiences of how Ben influenced them to create and not hold back. One is his long-time close friend Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho), who acknowledged Ben’s important role of nurturing her art career at its beginning stages. Ben was always willing to offer his advice to any artist in any medium and, with Barbara, wholeheartedly took time to promote others, many times in the beginning of their careers. His advice and thoughts could be very serious and witty, but we always knew that when he shared things, he was sharing from his heart.

One time Ben and I went on what we later called “Oklahoma Casino Day” when we visited 15 casinos in one day!

Many of these tended to be in tiny, out-of-the-way towns on small rundown back roads, but boy, did we have an adventure.

He knew how annoyed I was but secretly how much fun I had that day, and I think we even came home with a few dollars.

Free play was our friend that day. Traveling to other places for frybread, fried pies, Coney Island hot dogs, or up to Ike’s Chili

above Benjamin Harjo Jr. from the brochure of "The Works of Benjamin Harjo, Jr.," April 27–June 25, 1980, published by the US Department of the Interior, Indian Arts and Crafts Board, Southern Plains Indian Museum, Anadarko, OK. PD.

parlor in Tulsa are experiences that I will cherish and never forget. He would share stories with me of times past or growing up doing various things. He would point out places where things happened, where he recalled a special memory, or even a spot on the side of the road where he stopped to eat his sandwich and sketch the landscape.

I could go on and on about all the wonderful things he shared with me and I know many others have their great stories about their time with Ben too. He sure lived life as bold, beautiful, and colorful as his art which will live on and still inspire others to create from their hearts. His legacy, which Barbara tirelessly promotes, shall continue brightly and still carries on today from their home and his studio.

If you ever are drinking a root beer float, offer some up to Ben as I know I will always do in thinking of him and the most wonderful person he was. He joins the ancestors who he lovingly talked about. With his art, we can still enjoy the beauty that it is, that he is.

—Kenneth Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho/Cattaraugus Seneca) NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 119

MEMORIAL

PRESLEY LAFOUNTAIN January 30, 1956–March 31, 2023

above Presley LaFountain at his Santa Fe Indian Market booth, 2022. Image courtesy of Saige LaFountain (Turtle Mountain Chippewa/Diné).

I

N 2017 PRESLEY RONALD LAFOUNTAIN, Giiwedin (North Wind), returned to art after being the victim of a 2002 hate crime that almost killed him. “It’s a gift to do this, to be alive to do this, to keep the mind and body together, at a high level,” he said. “I realized that my art is top priority, everything I do now, it’s all about the work.”1 LaFountain passed away unexpectedly following surgery, leaving the art world with a legacy of loyal friendship, generous mentorship, and a powerful body of work. He had “a big heart and an old soul. He was that smiling warrior anticipating adversity and ready for anything. He was a mountain of a man.”2 Born and raised on the Turtle Mountain Reservation near Belcourt, North Dakota, Presley made his home in Santa Fe for many years. His artistic family includes his brother Bruce LaFountain (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), a

sculptor. His children, Samuel, Saige, and Aura LaFountain, all Turtle Mountain Chippewa/Diné, are artists making jewelry and sculptures. Multimedia artist Eve-Lauryn LaFountain (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) and jeweler and digital printmaker Adrian Standing Elk Pinnecoose (Navajo/ Southern Ute) are among his many talented relatives.

Presley LaFountain attended the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in the 1970s. In 1976 LaFountain received the IAIA Purchase Award. He also received the 1986 Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian Award for Most Promising Young Sculptor and Carver, beginning a long career of awards and accolades from critics and collectors.

In his artist statement, LaFountain wrote, “I carve deliberately without detail. I want to interpret a whole spectrum of emotions.”3 He sculpted many figurative works with flowing lines. To his skills in carving alabaster and marble, he added bronze sculpting.

Less than three months after the 2002 attack mangled his right hand, LaFountain learned to carve with his left hand. He began with smaller works but returned to large-scale works through rehabilitation, determination, and collaboration with workers whom he directed.

In 2012 LaFountain carved a monumental bronze, Generations, which now stands in the Memorial Garden of the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque. He credits that hospital with saving his life and providing the rehabilitation that allowed him to continue his art.

In the later part of his life, as injury and illness made it harder to do carving and sculpture, LaFountain studied printmaking with Michael McCabe (Diné, 1961–2023). The medium brought new insights, new audiences, and fond memories.

LaFountain loved art, and he was grateful for the joy and the lessons it brought him. “Life’s undulations have not only added to the incredible, vast possibilities within my art but also in my family [and] towards my part of the goodness in the world community,” he wrote. “I am thankful for the many people who have supported my career over the years [and] who continue to possess a part of my life through my sculpture.”4 Shortly after LaFountain’s passing, social media erupted with loud buzzing and respectful words as sculptors blasted their air hammers in his memory. The art world is thankful that Presley LaFountain found a way to overcome so many obstacles to continue creating the art that will influence and inspire generations to come.

—Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke)

1. Alex Jacobs, “Presley LaFountain Lives for his Art, the Art That Keeps Him Alive,” Indian Country Today, July 17, 2017, updated September 13, 2018, web.

2. “Presley Ronald LaFountain | 1956 – 2023 | Obituary,” Elick Funeral Home, 2023, web.

3. Presley LaFountain, “Presley LaFountain: Native American Sculptor,” Tony Whitecrow’s Deerskin Art & Western Collectibles, web.

4. Presley LaFountain, “Presley LaFountain,” web.

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MEMORIAL

MICHAEL McCABE February 8, 1961–April 3, 2023

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PROFOUNDLY SWEET HUMAN, Michael Duane McCabe, celebrated printmaker, ceramicist, writer, painter, and storyteller, left us this spring. Michael was Diné, born in Fort Defiance, Arizona, into the Táchii'nii clan (Red Running into the Water People clan) and born for Hashk'ąą Hadzohi clan (Yucca Fruit-Strung-Out-InA-Line clan). He spent his childhood in Las Vegas, Nevada, before relocating with family to Santa Fe in 1973 after the passing of his father, Peter McCabe. Michael frequently shared stories about his father, who first bought him crayons to draw a simple landscape, sparking a lifelong interest in art making.

In this drawing, a big yellow sun marked the beginning of Michael’s interest in shape, color, and nature. I can’t understate how beautiful this time in Michael’s life looked and how the documentation of his childhood truly sings. Abundant photographs reveal an air of profound love, well-intentioned humor, and celebratory gatherings centered around his parents Helen and Peter’s friendships, family, and food.

In Santa Fe Michael attended Santa Fe Mid-High School and later graduated from Santa Fe Alternative High School.

There, he studied theater, astronomy, and dance. Michael went on to study printmaking and painting at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). Here Michael learned monotype, a form of printmaking he would specialize in as a master printer and share with many for almost 40 years. He showed anyone with an interest how to do everything from layering multiple colors on a single plate to making successful gum arabic transfers. He also showed artists how to create etchings and solar plates. He taught many of us the importance of printing a “ghost image,” a technique utilized by many, including Edgar Heap of Birds (Southern Cheyenne) who often thanked Michael for introducing him to this technique.1 Michael studied poetics and spiritual practices at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in 1985. He studied with Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. Poetry’s influence on Michael’s art process was very evident; his viscosity printmaking was like a poem: structured, evocative, colorful, and open to interpretation through use of shapes and signifiers. In 1987 Michael traveled through southern France and Italy with fellow artist George Rivera (Pojoaque), building upon his appreciation of the great masters. He returned to the States deeply influenced by this travel.

After building his printmaking expertise, Michael taught at many institutions, including Santa Fe Community College; his alma mater IAIA; College of Santa Fe; Spotted Dog Press; California Correctional Center in Susanville, California; and many private studios. Michael loved teaching and shared many stories including one tale about an inmate who tattooed European art on the chest of his cellmate as his final project.

above Michael McCabe (Navajo, 1961–2023), Self-Portrait, 2018, digital photo collage. dimensions variable.

In 1996 Michael began working at Hand Graphics, where he built an extremely vibrant community with other printmakers and taught workshops. For the last 20 years, Michael operated Fourth Dimension Studios in Santa Fe with David Cost. Michael worked alongside many renowned artists such as Forrest Moses, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish-Kootenai/ Métis/Shoshone-Bannock), Emmi Whitehorse (Diné), the aforementioned Edgar Heap of Birds, and the late Presley LaFountain (Turtle Mountain Chippewa, 1956–2023). In Michael’s studio, you would print alongside him listening to Miles Davis, Kate Bush, Edith Piaf, Frank Zappa, and more. Michael’s music and humor nurtured and carried any artist working alongside him.

A recent posthumous publication mentioned that Michael was working on a series using images of his great-grandfather on layered collage prints with strong blocks of color, resist techniques, and interesting print combinations.2 The author described this project as a way of taking his great-grandfather to places he had never seen.

Losing Michael has been hard and will continue to be hard for many of us. Just remember that when you see a striking shape, a triangle, rare paper, cut flowers, or have a moment to sit alone, you can always relay a message to him. Michael is still within us, telling jokes, laughing, and being continually openhearted and giving.

—Grace Rosario Perkins (Diné/Akimel O'odham)

1. Fahima Haque. “The Native American Artist Harnessing ‘Old Indian Tricks,’” The New York Times, October 29, 2022, web.

2. Gussie Fauntleroy, “Michael McCabe,” Trend, Summer 2023, 172, web.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 121

MEMORIAL

ROSE KERSTETTER September 5, 1918–May 30, 2023

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above US Women's Army Corps Staff Sergeant Rose Kerstetter in 1943. Both images courtesy of the author. below Rose Kerstetter with one of her pots.

122 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

NGELINE “ROSE” (SKENANDORE) KERSTETTER was born in Oneida, Wisconsin, to John and Lillian (Archiquette) Skenandore, all Oneida. She lived to the age of 104. The century-plus of her existence was one that saw service in World War II in the Women’s Army Corps as part of the Tank Destroyer Forces.

This same resolute human, my grandmother, went on to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) where she graduated in 1979, earning an associate in fine arts degree. Grandma Rose’s focus was ceramics, and she worked diligently to research, experiment, and create her own vision of contemporary Iroquois pottery. She was part of a pivotal wave of Haudenosaunee potters who revitalized the art form. She taught countless lessons in the art of clay to many people of all ages, going on to mentor and encourage a new generation of Oneida potters including Ken Metoxen (Oneida Nation) and Jennifer Stevens Brewer-Sears (Oneida Nation/Oglala Lakota).

While I didn’t follow in Grandma Rose’s path as a ceramicist, as a child I spent countless hours in her studio in Embudo, New Mexico. I have an immense love for ceramics thanks to her. There was, and still is, a magic in seeing a soft clay body transform into a ceramic vessel. She helped to kindle the fire of Oneida ceramics and passed that love on to a new generation of artists, multitudes who she mentored and inspired. Her dedication to art helped her connect with many ceramicists from the Six Nations. Her travels took her across the country and into Canada. Her work is included in numerous private and public collections including the New York State Museum in Albany, New York; the Iroquois Indian Museum in Howes Cave, New York; as well as the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Art (MoCNA) in Santa Fe. One of her many career highlights was receiving a Community Spirit Award from the First Peoples Fund in 2002.

I had the good fortune to view some of her pieces in the IAIA MoCNA permanent collection and spend time with them. They brought back tons of memories of her diligently working in her adobe studio, processing clay, molding the forms, and firing them in her kiln. On the underside of these pots is her hallmark, a small running deer that refers to our family name Skenandore.

Rose gifted many of her grandchildren with a love for art, and many of us follow her footsteps into careers as visual artists, writers, and educators. She was proud to be Oneida and Turtle clan, but at the same time she was also humble about her contributions to our culture. She was much more comfortable in the role of teacher and beloved grandmother as opposed to standing in the spotlight.

Her legacy is immense. She helped to revitalize what was once considered a utilitarian art form and elevated it to a contemporary art.

Her life and work are a testament to the resilient creativity of the Oneida people.

—Hoka Skenandore (Oneida/Oglala Lakota/Luiseño/Chicano)

MEMORIAL

JOE SENUNGETUK March 29, 1940–May 31, 2023

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T’S DIFFICULT TO QUANTIFY the tremendous impact that Joseph “Joe” Engasongwok Senungetuk has had on the artistic, cultural, and political atmosphere of Alaska over the last 60 years. A renowned Inupiaq artist primarily known for his printmaking and sculpture, Joe never differentiated between his artistic practice, activism, writing, or cultural work when he spoke about his life. He saw all as essential components in fighting for respect, justice, and sovereignty for Indigenous peoples in Alaska and beyond. I had the honor of getting to know Joe and his wife, Unangax̂ artist Martha Jay Hoover-Senungetuk, in their roles as elders-in-residence at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage.

There they planned exhibitions, books, and how best to share and preserve Joe’s legacy of art and activism in Alaska for future generations.

Joe was born in the Inupiaq village of Kiŋigin (Wales), Alaska, in 1940 to a family of walrus ivory carvers and skin sewers who hunted and lived on the land.

When Joe was ten years old, his family moved to Nome so he could attend school in town. Upon graduating from high school in 1959, Joe majored in education at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF), and studied printmaking under Danny Pierce (1920–2014) and silverwork and woodworking with his brother Ronald Senungetuk (Inupiaq, 1933–2020).

After a tour of duty with the United States Army in Korea, Joe joined the Indian Arts and Crafts Board (IACB) Demonstration Workshop in Sitka, Alaska, as an artist-in-residence with fellow Inupiaq artist Peter Seeganna (1938–1974) in 1965. Under the supervision of Russian-American sculptor and IACB representative George Fedoroff (1906–2001), Joe and Peter created experimental objects to test the market viability of modernist Alaska Native artwork in a retail setting. While employed at the Sitka workshop, Joe won a Best of Show award

above Joseph “Joe” Engasongwok Senungetuk with a carved mask in 1996. Photo: Bill Hess.

Image courtesy of Bill Hess.

for his woodblock print Yellow Ochre and Black (1966) at the Alaska 67 Centennial Exposition.

When the Sitka Demonstration Workshop closed in 1968, Joe attended the San Francisco Art Institute. He obtained a bachelor of art degree in printmaking with a minor in sculpture in 1970.

Immersing himself in the counterculture arts and politics of 1960s San Francisco, he took a job as an editor and author at the local Indian Historian Press in 1968, publishing his first book, Give or Take a Century: An Eskimo Chronicle, in 1971, which coincided with the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. In it, Joe made clear his skepticism of the land claims process and his opposition to the tying of Alaska Native land claims to resource extraction and the construction of an oil pipeline in Alaska.

Give or Take was a turning point in Joe’s artwork, as writing and overt references to political activism and resistance became hallmarks of Joe’s artistic practice.

This is especially evident in woodblock prints from this era such as Emergence of Resource: The Oil Spill Shadow (1969), a dark image of crude oil spewing over

the Alaskan landscape and its inhabitants, and Yesteryear’s Seasons (1973), which incorporated headlines from the Tundra Times about the banning of whaling and protested the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. As he told Melissa Shaginoff (Ahtna Athabaskan/ Northern Paiute) in a 2019 interview, “[I] used a lot of headlines from the Tundra Times, Howard Rock’s Inuit newspaper. I liked to use headlines about whaling and politicians—things that affected Inupiaq lives. I also liked that it was writing from Native people for Native people.”1 Joe returned to Alaska in the early 1970s and taught art and anthropology courses at UAF and Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka. Growing increasingly frustrated with the numerous arts foundations and government agencies in Alaska, Joe joined Tlingit educator and activist Andrew Hope III (1949–2008) in founding the Raven’s Bones artist collective in 1976. During this period, Joe was also an artist-in-residence at the Visual Arts Center of Anchorage, where he experimented with assemblages and found objects in his sculpture.

Throughout the 1980s, Joe held several solo shows and participated in important exhibitions and workshops including Alaskameut ’86 (1986) and the traveling People in Peril (1988–1995).

Joe’s last show was a group exhibition that also featured work by Martha and his granddaughter, Violet, fittingly titled Intergenerational Love. It ran from October 7 to 31, 2022, at Alaska Pacific University. The reception was a beautiful celebration of Joe and his life with a potluck, performances by the Kingikmiut Dancers from Kiŋigin, and a viewing of the documentary Joe Senungetuk: Art and Life (2022). Reflecting on her late husband’s legacy, Martha shared with me that “Engasongwok lived his whole life shining a light on Inupiaq ways of being through his writing and art to honor his family and his truth.” —Christopher W. Smith

1. Melissa Shaginoff, “The Re-Collected Images of Joseph Senungetuk,” Inuit Art Quarterly, 32, no. 3 (Fall 2019), 44–49.

NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 123

RICK BARTOW

CALENDAR July 16, 2023–June 2, 2024: Santa Fe, NM Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, 710 Camino Lejo (505) 476-1269 | indianartsandculture.org July 19–September 1: Oklahoma City, OK Collective Wisdom at the Red Earth Art Center, 100 N. Broadway Avenue, Suite 110. Group show curated by Billy Hensley (Chickasaw) (405) 768-3395 | redearth.org July 22 & 23: Tahoma, CA 2023 Waší∙šiw ɁitdéɁ Festival at Meeks Bay Resort, 7941 Emerald Bay Road. The Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California’s annual culture and art festival | (775) 265-8600 | washoetribe.us July 22 & 23: Victor, NY Indigenous Music & Arts Festival at the Seneca Art & Cultural Center, 7000 County Road 41. 10:00 am–5:00 pm. Free.

(585) 398-6151 | ganondagan.org

FROELICK GALLERY Portland, OR | 503.222.1142 For J & J & J, 2000, drypoint etching, 9˝x 6˝, edition of 20, published by Moon and Dog Press

July 22–September 24: Tacoma, WA In the Spirit Contemporary Native Arts 2023 at the Washington State Historical Society, 1911 Pacific Avenue. One-day festival: Saturday, August 12 | (888) 238-4373 | washingtonhistory.org July 22, 2023–March 30, 2024: Calera, OK Bok Abaiya: Practiced Hands and the Arts of Choctaw Basketry at the Choctaw Cultural Center, 1919 Hina Hanta Way (833) 708-9582 | choctawculturalcenter.com July 25–December 16: Lincoln, NE From Paintbrushes to Camera Lenses: Creative Women of the Great Plains, Part II at the Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q Street (402) 472-3082 | unl.edu/plains July 25–December 16: Lincoln, NE Supporting Indigenous Sisters: An International Print Exchange at the Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q Street | (402) 472-3082 unl.edu/plains July 26–September 2: Warm Springs, OR The Museum at Warm Springs (1993–2023): A 30-Year Retrospective at at the Museum of Warm Springs, 2189 US Highway 26 (541) 553-3331 | museum.warmsprings-nsn.gov July 27–October 29: Edmonds, WA Native American Modern: Shared Expressions in Northwest Art at the Cascadia Art Museum, 190 Sunset Ave. S., #E (425) 336-4809 | cascadiaartmuseum.org July 28–November 12: El Paso, TX Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology at El Paso Museum of Art, One Arts Festival Plaza. Organized by Manuela Well-Off-Man and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (915) 212-0300 | epma.art/art/exhibitions August 4 & 5: Norman, OK 10th Annual Central Oklahoma Native American Art Sale at the Cleveland County Fairgrounds, 615 E. Robinson Street. Dealers and artists. Organized by Sally Gettys of the OKC Indian Art Club.

9:00 am–5:00 pm. Indian tacos by First American United Methodist Church. Free | (405) 321-8961 | okcindianart.wordpress.com

124 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

BOK ABAIYA: PR ACTICED HANDS AND THE ARTS OF CHOCTAW BASKETRY

JULY 22 , 2023 - MARCH 30, 2024

SCAN OR GO TO: BIT.LY/CCC-EXHIBITIONS

August 4–6: Ignacio, CO Pino Nuche Indigenous Art Market & Juried Show at the Sky Ute Casino and Resort, 14324 Highway 172 North. Hosted by the Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum | (970) 563-9583 southernutemuseum.org August 4–13: Gallup, NM 101st Annual Gallup Intertribal Indian Ceremonial in Red Rock Park, 825 Outlaw Road, and other locations | (505) 863-3896 gallupceremonial.com August 4–28: Santa Fe Daniel McCoy: Mvskoke Diaspora at Hecho Gallery, 129 W. Palace Avenue. Opening: Friday, August 4, 5:00–7:00 pm (505) 455-6882 | hecho.gallery August 5 & 6: Santa Fe, NM Second Annual Nakotah LaRance Memorial Youth Hoop Dance Championship at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, 710 Camino Lejo. 9:00 am–4:00 pm. Free | (505) 476-1269 indianartsandculture.org August 8–December 8: Cullowhee, NC Spark of the Eagle Dancer: The Collecting Legacy of Lambert Wilson at the Bardo Arts Center, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, 199 Centennial Drive | (828) 227-2787 | wcu.edu/bardo-arts-center August 10–13: Santa Fe, NM Objects of Art & American Indian/Tribal Santa Fe at El Muse Cultural de Santa Fe, 555 Camino de la Familia. One-day: $20, run of show: $30 | objectsofartsantafe.com

August 11 & 12: Nuuk, Greenland Qooqqut Festival 2023 at Qooqqut Nuan. Free | +299 36 37 70 facebook.com/qooqqutfestival August 11–14: Santa Fe, NM Whitehawk Antique Indian & Ethnographic Art Show at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy Street. Preview opening: August 11 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm ($100/person).

Day ticket: $20, run-of-show: $30 | whitehawkshows.com August 12: Tacoma, WA In the Spirit Northwest Native Festival at the Washington State Historical Society, 1911 Pacific Avenue. 10:00 am–5:00 pm (253) 272-9747 | tacomaartmuseum.org August 17–20: Santa Fe, NM Native Cinema Showcase Santa Fe at the New Mexico History Museum, 113 Lincoln Avenue | (505) 476-5200 nmhistorymuseum.org August 18: Santa Fe, NM Meet the Next Wave of Indigenous Art Curators at the Ralph T. Coe Center for the Arts, 1590 B, Pacheco Street. Roundtable discussion hosted by First American Art Magazine and the Coe Center. 2:00–4:00 pm, free | firstamericanartmagazine.com August 18: Santa Fe, NM Shy Summer Market at the Ralph T. Coe Center for the Arts, 1590 B, Pacheco Street. Hosted by Shy Natives. Luxurious intimates designed

by Native American women, 4:00–9:00 pm. Ticketed event (505) 983-6372 | shynatives.com NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 125

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August 18 & 19: Santa Fe, NM 3rd Annual Case Trading Post Artists Market at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 704 Camino Lejo. Free admission. Friday: 8:00 am–3:00 pm, Saturday: 9:00 am–3:00 pm (505) 982-4636 | wheelwright.org/artists-market August 18–20: Santa Fe, NM Third Annual Pathways Indigenous Arts Festival at Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino, 30 Buffalo Thunder Trail. Art market, fashion shows, food, films. Friday and Saturday: 9:00 am–5:00 pm, Sunday: 9:00 am–4:00 pm | (505) 455-5041 poehcenter.org/pathways August 18–20: Santa Fe, NM Sovereign Santa Fe Exhibition, including Collective Wisdom, Pivot: Skateboard Deck Art, and Keepers of the Land at La Fonda on the Plaza, Lumpkins Ballroom, 100 E. San Francisco Street farahnheight.com/sovereign August 18, 2023–January 7, 2024: Santa Fe, NM The Art of Jean LaMarr at IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 108 Cathedral Place | (505) 983-1666 | iaia.edu/museum August 19 & 20: Santa Fe, NM 101st Annual SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market in downtown Santa Fe | (505) 983-5220 | swaia.org August 19 & 20: Santa Fe, NM Free Indian Market Show at the Federal Park, 100 S. Federal Place (505) 670-5918 | freeindianmarket.org August 24–December 15: Syracuse, NY Continuity, Innovation, and Resistance: The Art of Peter B. Jones at the Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building (315) 443-4097 | museum.syr.edu August 26 & 27: Flagstaff, AZ 12th Annual Hopi Arts & Culture Festival at the Continental Country Club Driving Range. Hosted by the Hopi Tribe Economic Development Corporation. Saturday: 9:00 am–5:00 pm, Sunday: 9:00 am–3:00 pm | (928) 774-5211 x217 | hopifestival.com August 26–December 2: Salem, OR Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts Biennial at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, 700 State Street | (503) 370-6855 willamette.edu/arts/hfma August 27: Santa Rosa, CA California Indian Day Artist Showcase at the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center, 5250 Aero Drive. 12:00 pm–4:00 pm (707) 579-3004 | cimcc.org August 27, 2023–January 7, 2024: Austin, TX Forces of Nature: Ancient Maya Art from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art at the Blanton Museum of Art, 200 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard | (512) 471-7324| blantonmuseum.org September 1–October 13: Tulsa, OK Protection, Adaptation & Resistance at Tulsa Living Arts, 307 E. Reconciliation Way. Group exhibition of Alaska Native artists, curated by Asia Freeman | (918) 585-1234 | livingarts.org September 1–October 21: Worland, WY Grounded: Restoring Our World Through a Sacred Harmony with the Earth and Each Other at the Washakie Museum and Cultural Center, 2200 Big Horn Avenue. Hosted by Caravan (307) 347-4102 | oncaravan.org/grounded

September 1, 2023–January 2, 2024: Phoenix, AZ Early Days: Indigenous Art from the McMichael at the Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Avenue | (602) 252-8840 heard.org/exhibits September 1, 2023–January 21, 2024: Oklahoma City, OK Nations at War! Field Sketches of a Pawnee Warrior at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 1700 NE 63rd Street. Solo exhibition for drawings by Sergeant Brummett Echohawk (Pawnee, 1922–2006) | (405) 478-2250 nationalcowboymuseum.org September 1–3: Farmington, NM 34th Annual Totah Festival & Indian Market in downtown Farmington, NM | (505) 599-1174 | totahfestival.org September 2 & 3: Howes Cave, NY 40th Annual Iroquois Arts Festival at the Iroquois Museum, 324 Carvens Road | (518) 296-8949) | iroquoismuseum.org September 8–November 26: Topeka, KS Do Pi Ka: A Land Acknowledgement at Alice C. Sabatini Gallery, Topeka & Shawnee County Library, 1515 SW 10th Avenue | 785arts.com/events | tscpl.org/gallery September 9 & 10: Lawrence, KS Haskell Indian Art Market on the Haskell Indian Nations University Campus, 155 Indian Avenue at Massachusetts Street (785) 749-8467 | haskell.edu/hiam September 9, 2023–January 14, 2024: Doylestown, PA Never Broken: Visualizing Lenape Histories at Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine Street. Curated by Joe Baker (Delaware Tribe) | (215) 340-9800 | michenerartmuseum.org September TBA, 2023–February TBA, 2024: Philadelphia, PA El Origen de la Noche (The Origin of Night) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Sound installation with Indigenous communities of Colombia (215) 763-8100 | philamuseum.org September 16 & 17: Prescott, AZ 25th Annual Prescott Indian Art Market at the Sharlot Hall Museum, 415 W. Gurley Street. Saturday: 9:00 am–5:00 pm, Sunday: 9:00 am–4:00 pm | (928) 445-3122 sharlothallmuseum.org/festival/piam September 20–December 3: Evanston, IL Rosalie Favell: Indigenous Artists Facing the Camera at the Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive. Solo exhibits of photographic portraits by Rosalie Favell (Métis) | (847) 491-4000 blockmuseum.northwestern.edu September 22 & 23: Davis, CA Grand Opening of the Gorman Museum of Native American Art, 181 Old Davis Road. Formerly the C.N. Gorman Museum (530) 752-6567 | gormanmuseum.ucdavis.edu September 22–TBA: Salamanca, NY Beadwork Exhibition at the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum, 82 W. Hetzel Street | (716) 945-1760 | senecamuseum.org September 22, 2023–March 10: Winnipeg, MB Tarralik Duffy: Gasoline Rainbows at the Winnipeg Art Gallery– Qaumajuq, 300 Memorial Boulevard | +1 (204) 786-6641 | wag.ca

September 24, 2023–January 15, 2024: Washington, DC The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans at the National Gallery of Art, 4th Street NW at Madison Drive NW. Curated by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish-Kootenai/Métis/ Shoshone-Bannock) | (202) 737-4215 | nga.gov September 26, 2023–June 25, 2024: Windsor, ON Nii Ndahlohke / I Work at Art Windsor Essex, 401 Riverside Drive West.

About Mount Elgin Industrial School | +1 (519) 977-0013 | artwindsoressex.ca October 6 & 7: Tishomingo, OK Southeastern Art Show and Market (SEASAM) near 411 W. 9th Street.

Hosted by the Chickasaw Nation | (580) 272-5520 | chickasaw.net October 7–December 31: Cooperstown, NY Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest at the Fenimore Art Museum, 5798 State Highway 80 | (607) 547-1400 fenimoreartmuseum.org October 11–14: Halifax, NS Native American Art Studies Association 2023 Conference at the Halifax Convention Center, 1650 Argyle Street | nativearts.org October 13–December 23: Loveland, CO Woven in Resilience: A Feminine Perspective of Contemporary Indigenous Art at the Artworks Center for Contemporary Art, 310 N. Railroad Avenue (970) 663-5555 | artworksloveland.org October 13–15: Catoosa, OK 18th Annual Cherokee Art Market at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tulsa, 777 W. Cherokee Avenue, Sequoyah Convention Center. Awards ceremony: Friday, October 13 | (877) 779-6977 | visitcherokeenation.com NO. 39, SUMMER 2023 | 127

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October 14, 2023–March 23, 2024: Tucson, AZ Pulse: Weavings and Paintings by Marlowe Katoney at the University of Arizona Museum of Art, 1031 N. Olive Road (520) 621-7567 | artmuseum.arizona.edu October 20, 2023–March 10, 2024: Montreal, QC Wampum: Beads of Diplomacy at the McCord Stewart Museum, 690 Sherbrooke Street West. Organized with the musée du quai Branly– Jacques Chirac | +1 (514) 861-6701 | musee-mccord-stewart.ca October 23, 2023–January 14, 2024: Minneapolis, MN In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890–Now at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2400 3rd Avenue South. Curated by Jill Ahlberg Yohe, PhD | (888) 642-2787 | new.artsmia.org October 24–26: Oklahoma City, OK International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries, and Museums at the Omni Oklahoma City Hotel, 100 Oklahoma City Boulevard | (405) 401-9657 | atalm.org October 27–28: Mendocino, CA Native Arts Expo 7 at the Mendocino Art Center, 45200 Little Lake Street | (707) 937-5818 | mendocinoartcenter.org November 3–5: Durant, OK Choctaw Powwow at the Choctaw Event Center. 3702 Choctaw Road (580) 920-0160 | choctawculturalcenter.com/powwow

(855) NAAA-INC EMAIL INFO@NAAAINC.COM VISIT WWW.NAAAINC.COM CALL

November 3–December 31: Rock Springs, WY Grounded: Restoring Our World Through a Sacred Harmony with the Earth and Each Other at the Community Fine Arts Center, 400 C Street | (307) 362-6212 | oncaravan.org/grounded November 4: Tahlequah, OK Skasdicon at Northeastern State University, University Center Ballroom, 2nd floor, 612 N. Grand Avenue. Indigenous comic convention hosted by the Cherokee Nation. Free | skasdicon.com November 11: Oklahoma City, OK Native Sound Summit at the First Americans Museum, 659 First Americans Boulevard. Day of experimental audio, led by Warren Realrider (Pawnee/Crow), including a performance by Khu.éex' (405) 594-2100 | famok.org November 11: San Antonio, TX Yanaguana Indian Arts Festival at the Briscoe Western Art Museum, 210 W Market Street | (210) 299-4499 | briscoemuseum.org/events November 11, 2023–April 28, 2024: Oklahoma City, OK Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive | (405) 236-3100 okcmoa.com November 11, 2023–March 17, 2024: Boston, MA Marking Resilience: Indigenous North American Prints at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 465 Huntington Avenue. Organized in collaboration with artist and professor Duane Slick (Meskwaki/ Ho-Chunk) | (617) 267-9300 | mfa.org November 14–December 28: Granger, IN David Martin: Solo Exhibition at the Corvilla Community Art Gallery, 135 E. University Drive. Exhibition for this Pokagon Potawatomi painter | (574) 289-9779 corvilla.org/post/community-art-gallery

For more events, visit our online calendar at

FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM/ CALENDAR 128 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE

RECLAIMING HOME CONTEMPORARY SEMINOLE ART

THROUGH SEP 4

ARTISTS IN THE EXHIBITION: NOAH BILLIE // WILSON BOWERS // HOUSTON R. CYPRESS ELISA HARKINS // ALYSSA OSCEOLA // JESSICA OSCEOLA C. MAXX STEVENS // TONY TIGER // HULLEAH J. TSINHNAHJINNIE BRIAN ZEPEDA // CORINNE ZEPEDA // PEDRO ZEPEDA

INFORMATION + TICKETS

ringling.org

Paid for in part by Sarasota County Tourist Development Tax Revenues. This exhibition is supported, in part, by the Gulf Coast Community Foundation; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art Endowment; the Mandell and Madeleine Berman Foundation Endowment; and the Bob and Diane Roskamp Endowment. Sponsored, in part, by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture; the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; and the National Endowment for the Arts. Special thanks to The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for supporting the Curatorial Research Fellowship.

Elisa Harkins (Cherokee/Muscogee [Creek], b. 1978), Mekusape Fullana [video still], 2021. Digital video with sound, 12:45 minutes. Courtesy of the artist.

Photo: Ian Byers-Gamber.

NOW OPEN!